I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 

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UNITED STATES OP AMERICA . f 



FUTURE 



Religious Policy of America. 



A DISCUSSION OF 



Eleven Great Living Questions. 



BY 



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WILLIAM RILEY HALSTEAD. 






CINCINNATI: 
HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN 

1877. 

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 

W. R. HALSTEAD, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



®J0 

Thomas Bowman, d. d., ll, d., 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 

33s if)* autfior. 



PREFACE 



This volume is offered to the public without 
apology. It goes out in search of readers. Its 
pages discuss a variety of the greatest of living 
questions, concerning which there is a wide differ- 
ence of sentiment, and, as yet, no adjustment. The 
reasonable reader will not look for a book of this 
kind to be an array of universally accepted opinions. 
Any class of inferences drawn from the related facts 
of secular and religious history is likely to be more 
or less contested. If the book helps to make better 
Christians and better patriots of the people of this 
country, the author's purpose is accomplished. 

Terre Haute, April, 1877. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



-♦- 



PAGE. 

I. Correlations of Law and Providence, ... 9 
II. Observations on the Religious Condition of the 

World, 35 

III. Protestantism — Its Nature and Needs, . .61 

IV. Skeptical Thought, 88 

V. Romanism, f 135 

VI. The Unsolved Religious Problem, . . . 157 

VII. Temperance, 173 

VIII. Priesthood of the People, 180 

IX. American Ministry, 186 

X. Material Aids, 195 

XI. Inner Church Life, 201 



Future Religious Policy of America. 



Chapter I. 

CORRELATIONS OF LAW AND PROVIDENCE. 

WHEN this age shall write itself in history, it 
will doubtless be seen, that our civilization 
has not yet reached the divine ideal, and is therefore 
hardly able to follow out its consequences. There 
are foreign currents running through our complex 
national life, which, for a period, may hold us in 
bondage to ancient errors. A great task is reserved 
until this time, that of using the past and the future 
of history to place in their just relations the physical 
wants and the spirit life of man. 

There are principles of human foresight in the 
nature and connection of events, and in the human 
mind and heart, — principles in no way related to the 
superstitions of the fortune-teller, or the jugglings 
of the astrologer. An intimate knowledge of the 
past will enable the sagacious mind to foretell events 
with great precision. History has set up guide- 
boards, showing the ways of prosperity and adver- 
sity. The world to-day is standing on a vantage 
ground of nearly six thousand years, from which it 



io Law and Providence. 

is better able to see its surroundings and look further 
into the future. Whoever has undertaken to solve 
the vexed problem of American history may study 
his lesson by the beautiful and constant light of anal- 
ogy which has been thrown over the annals of 
mankind. 

The moral and civil convulsions of history have 
been preceded by signs too plain to be mistaken. 
Tacitus foretold the downfall of Rome, and the in- 
vasion of the Barbarians. Charlemagne, when he 
first saw the Normans invade his dominions, pre- 
dicted the calamities which befell his empire for a 
century afterward. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw what 
would come in consequence of the sectaries of the 
English Church. Bishop Butler, in his sermon be- 
fore the House of Lords, uttered a grand and true 
prediction concerning the political disorders which 
would arise from the atheistical principles of the 
eighteenth century. The reflecting minds of Eng- 
land predicted the independence of the American 
colonies thirty years before it occurred. Coleridge 
and Mazarin and Marshall and Mansfield and Burke 
and Pitt and Rousseau were political predictors of 
great sagacity. Statesmen of our own country, for 
years preceding the great crisis which unmanacled 
the black man of the South, foresaw that the popu- 
lar mind was becoming ripe for something tragical. 
Patriotism and dread, no doubt, time and again 
kept back the prophecy from many lips. 

In spite of the political antagonisms of Clay and 
Webster and Calhoun, it often hung equally, like 
an impending shadow upon their brows. The time 



Accident and Chance. ii 

came nearer, and the political horizon gave signs 
that a storm of civil discord was gathering to drench 
our southern soil in blood. From its hurtlings in 
the atmosphere, we not only believed, we felt there 
would be war. So deep have been the presentiments 
of those turbulent convulsions which have swept 
nations to their graves, that in ancient times the 
sympathy of nature was supposed to have brought 
the warnings. On the other hand, those glimpses of 
prosperity and peace which the nations have been 
able to wrest from their favorable surroundings have 
awakened the highest energies of the race, and have 
led it with a throbbing life into the greatest glories. 
This is not the work of fatalism or chance. The 
world's progress and decline hinges forever on the 
operation of free and contingent causes. Every fiber 
of man's moral agency rises in rebellion against any 
thing like a blind and inexorable decree. There 
is no such thing as chance. Accidents never happen. 
These words are found in our language expressing 
ideas which appear on the surface of things, but 
which have no foundation in reality. If any thing 
could happen by chance, there would be no grounds 
of dependence anywhere; the most dreadful uncer- 
tainty would prevail, an irresponsible definition would 
be given to the occurrences of life, and that gladness 
which comes up out of the most unfortunate events 
would be subverted and destroyed. 

Law. — All nature indicates the existence of con- 
trolling law. Proofs of its dominion are on every 
hand. In the physical world, and in the moral 



12 Law and Providence. 

world as well, an order and a system is discovered, 
so extensive, so regular and uniform, that the shrewd- 
est minds have been led into the belief that it is the 
sole governor of the universe. Nature, with its 
beauty and grandeur, the mote in the sunbeam, and 
the vast sweep of the planets, with the hushed music 
of their silence, all feel the tread of cosmic law. 
Atoms and systems are alike under its control. It 
quietly forges a chain of natural causes to engirdle 
the globe. Its giant forces, in their vast extent, 
have been toiling on for ages, with a profound order 
which baffles conception. A universe of law is the 
sublimest natural truth with which we are acquainted. 

Certainty. — Law is invested with great certainty. 
The sun has made his appearance in the zones at 
known times, without a single variation for thousands 
of years. The inclined plane of the earth's axis to 
the plane of its orbit around the sun, invariably 
causes the change in the seasons. 

Gravitation operates according to known and es- 
tablished principles through all space. With many 
misgivings the mind may accept and memorize the 
first statements in astronomy, but when it is led to 
the calculation of an eclipse of the sun, wherein so 
many data are used, so many sure principles are ap- 
plied, the last shadows of incredulity take the wings 
of the morning. Even the proposition that two 
straight lines may forever approach each other yet 
never meet, is divested of all uncertainty in the ap- 
plication of mathematical laws. These are so many 
evidences that law in itself is absolutely reliable. 



Nature of Law. 13 

Relentless. — Law is stern and relentless in its oper- 
ation. Fire burns. Cold freezes. A needle point 
penetrating to the seat of life will invariably produce 
death. The rifleman's bullet whistles through the air 
with death on its wing, and sinks as fatally into the 
heart of a comrade as if sent purposely in pursuit of 
an enemy. The waves of the sea have overwhelmed 
many a drowning saint. A solid stone wall will 
not tumble down simply to break the head of a vil- 
lain when he crouches in its shadow. To leap from 
a precipice is to court known and fatal consequences. 
As certainly as the atmospheric forces gather, and 
the conditions are at hand, the whirlwind sweeps 
down upon the city, devastating palaces and hovels 
alike ; as regardless of the life of the child as the 
robber. Law goes ringing relentlessly down the 
changes of cause and effect like the car on its track; 
and woe betide men or nations if they cross its path- 
way. The only way to escape appalling disaster, or 
enjoy protection, is to know and obey. There is no 
concession, no compromise, no respect for moral 
ends, in all its great dominion. For this reason wor- 
shipers of law are generally fatalists and disbelievers 
in the Christian system. 

The exclusive investigation of material forces 
tends to smother the emotions, to clip the wings of 
faith, and make the moral man cry out for anguish. 

Law and History. — There are knowable certainties 
in the moral world. Ethical laws are as inexorable 
as the law of atoms. They operate almost with the 
certainty of an equation in geometry. In the world's 



14 Law and Providence. 

economy, it is not only necessary that an orderly ar- 
rangement be imposed on nature, but should be 
manifested in the most intricate and mysterious rela- 
tions of life. Hereon is reached the great high 
ground of security in the regulation of human con- 
duct. History, in a secondary sense, is but a strife 
for man's ascendency over the material world. As 
the conflict proceeds, the sternest physical forces are 
subordinated, and as by the wand of the enchanter, 
they are transmuted into laws for the social compact. 
This is more especially true of the last thousand 
years. The first ages were comparative strangers to 
the economic sciences which have now become giant 
sources of wealth and progress. Hoary kingdoms 
grew up and passed away, in the fertile belts of the 
Nile and Euphrates, and on the plains of inland Asia, 
before the human race had learned to wrest from 
nature the eternal secrets of a nation's greatest 
power. We have inherited from antiquity her lan- 
guages, her poetry, her fine arts, her philosophies, 
and her religions. These come to us with unequaled 
excellence. But the spirit of invention and discov- 
ery, the omnipotence of agriculture, and this inter- 
national network of commerce, are all our own. 
Thus our legitimate pantheistic prayer is being an- 
swered in the appliance of laws to work out results, 
for which we have no examples in the past. And 
yet, while these new enterprises may bring luster to 
our name, while they may greatly modify and de- 
velop, they will never make any radical change in 
the ancient order of things. Draper's overdrawn 
parallel between the life of the individual and the 



The Nation and the Individual. 15 

nation has in it the elements of a great truth. Youth, 
manhood, old age — this is the order. A nation's 
virtue -may prolong this life ; a nation's infamy may 
cut it short, but can never change it. 

The child lives under a succession of unreal ap- 
pearances. He views the world through a telescope 
whose foundations are laid in the unsettled surface- 
grounds of human experience, and* he gets a blurred 
image. Volition stirs the leaf. The birds of the 
air divine his intentions. He is fascinated by all 
that he can not comprehend. Whatever is strange, 
or powerful, or vast, impresses him with dread. 
Youth is the mythological age of individual life. Its 
vague fancies are characteristic. They are the scin- 
tillations of an immortal fire within, soon to be re- 
vealed in the steady blaze of manhood. The fruition 
of knowledge can not be enjoyed in childhood. 
The vigor of manhood can not be retained in the 
sunset of life. These laws of man's being are inva- 
riable, absolute. So with nations ; from rude begin- 
nings development brings into the full tide of 
strength; time advances, and if history is any crite- 
rion, decrepitude and death ensue. Unless the Gos- 
pel triumphs, or unless some new and strange light is 
thrown over the annals of our time, the day is com- 
ing when our metropolitan centers will stand in ruins, 
and be visited by the curious, as men now marvel 
at the desolations of Jerusalem and Nimroud. 

The Fetich worship of Egypt began in an age of 
myth. Her proud manhood begins with the building 
of the pyramids, and extends through the line of her 
Ptolemies. Her decrepitude may be dated from the 



1 6 Law and Providence. 

destruction of Alexandria, and the burning of the 
Serapion. 

The Hebrews were children in their bondage, and 
through the desert. A nucleus of strength begins 
with the Judges, and culminates with Solomon. De- 
crepitude is induced by the captivity, and the national 
mission, save what prophecy reveals, ends in Christ. 

The age of mythology in Greece gave rise to the 
expedition of the Argonauts. It gave incident to 
the lives of its fabulous heroes. It furnished mate- 
rial for the songs of Homer. It developed those 
ridiculous tales concerning the gods, which, in after 
time, were polished into one of the most beautiful 
and fascinating philosophies the world has ever 
known. The Grecian age of reason was that of her 
poets and rhetoricians and statesmen. The decline 
of Grecian countries was contemporary with the rise 
of the Roman Empire. 

We are all acquainted with the impossible tales 
of Romulus and Remus ; the romantic story of the 
Sabian women; the Vestal fires, and the heroism of 
Regulus. We read of fauns and nymphs and sirens 
without number; and how all Italy was filled with 
the mystic whisperings of a thousand sacred groves. 
While the youth were being educated, some skep- 
tical Roman had climbed the heights of Olympus, 
without finding the dwelling-place of a single god. 
The discovery of the deception, with a thousand 
others in the ancient mythological worship, prepared 
the people to be lifted forever above paganism. The 
ingrafting of Christianity brought new r impulses into 
the empire, and Rome's glory is now known as the 



Battle Ground of the Age. 17 

theme of much eloquence and song. In course of 
time, the nation's energies were paralyzed by corrup- 
tion. Then began her decline ; through a long line 
of events, extending over a period of nine hundred 
years — a splendid architecture; fields once a gar- 
den ; a grand civilization ; finally destroyed by the 
ruthless Goth and Vandal. 

These illustrations, in themselves, only approxi- 
mate, yet they impress the meaning, and show how 
the nations are being controlled by fixed and eternal 
principles ; and how the same great causes of growth 
and decay are operated all along, and are at work 
now. Who does not believe that Spain is dying, or. 
that France will never again become omnipotent 
among the nations ? 

If we can possibly discover the great virus of 
death which has desolated countries in the past, we 
may be able to shun it, and. lay hold on surer princi- 
ples, such as will always bring with them the great- 
est wealth of happiness. 

Providence. — As all nature indicates the existence 
of law, so all intelligence and reason add their testi- 
mony to the existence of a superintending Provi- 
dence over human affairs. We are now approaching 
disputed ground. If infidelity can get rid of a di- 
vine Providence, the stronghold of the Christian sys- 
tem is taken ; the fatalism of law will rule the world. 

Over the fact of God's intelligent government of 

the world, the hosts of the Lord and of Antichrist 

are struggling. All subordinate conflicts ultimately 

relate to this one. 

2 



1 8 Law and Providence. 

The discussion upon which we are about to enter 
will be easy or difficult, according to the kind of 
proof expected. If a demonstration of the existence 
of the Divine Supervision is demanded, we surrender 
the task as hopeless. A moral truth can not be 
demonstrated. We have to do, at present, not with 
a conclusion, but a principle — one of the first of all 
principles. It is a priori in itself. The highest de- 
gree of probability should be satisfactory in its dis- 
cussion. A satisfactory proof may perhaps be found 
in the accumulative argument of the ages ; in the 
general consent of the wisest and best of the nations. 
If an opinion is shown to be world wide ; if it is 
found on every page of sacred and profane history ; 
if the world has prospered in its belief; if it addi- 
tionally bears the stamp of reason on its face ; and 
above all, if it appeals like an intuition to the soul, 
the evidence in its favor is very strong. 

The natural theologies of the world have always 
given off about the same results. There is but very 
little difference in the great under-currents of native 
religious thought and feeling, the world over. The 
hungerings of the race have led it to the unfolding of 
about the same principles of truth every-where. A 
substratum of fact underlies all pagan and Christian 
systems alike ; in which have germinated ideas of the 
Divine Being, known at present as the common 
property of mankind. These ideas, so nearly the 
same among all peoples, are not likely to be far from 
right, unless there are contradictions in the human 
character. This being true, the opinions of men in 
all ages of the world concerning these universal 



Testimony. 19 

notions, are valuable. The notion of a divine super- 
vision is not the fruit of Christianity. It is the natu- 
ral product of man's spirit nature, seeking the rela- 
tion it holds to its Author. 

The classic ages are full of the recognitions of a 
Providence. The philosophical starting-point of Py- 
thagoras was unity. Unity multiplies itself into all 
phenomena ; is universally diffused, is the universal 
harmonizer, the source of all being and truth. This 
essence of things was celebrated as Deity ; and was 
the foundation of a system intended to teach the or- 
derly arrangement of things, leading to an end. 
Unity was necessary to the soul's immortality; and 
it placed man's whole life under the guidance of the 
gods. Pindar, the lyric poet of Greece, was so im- 
bued with a divine superintendency that success in 
life was attributed to supernatural causes. Herodotus, 
the father of profane history, declared that the struc- 
ture of the world gave evidence of an intelligent au- 
thor. .He says, "Divine Providence appears to be, 
as one might expect beforehand, a wise contriver. " 
^Eschylus, the Greek Milton, fought at Marathon, 
exulted with the victors, and ascribed the wonderful 
deliverances to the gods. Cicero, the prince of ora- 
tors, says, "If we everyway examine the universe, it 
is apparent from the greatest reason, that the whole 
is admirably governed by a Providence for the safety 
and preservation of all beings.' ' 

Livy, Rome's historian, ascribes the greatness of 
the nation to the blessing of the gods, and the great- 
ness of the city to the fates. The fates, in mythol- 
ogy, imply influences akin to the intelligent operations 



20 Law and Providence. 

of Providence with law. They are certainly not blind 
necessities; as may be seen from the obvious con- 
nection in which the word is often used, especially 
in Virgil. Livy searches antiquity, and finds that 
his own spirit is in sympathy with that which the 
wisest should have cherished. Tacitus vibrates be- 
tween skepticism and unbounded faith. When his 
prophecies of punishment fail, he despairs ; but when 
the lecherous corruption of his time meets its doom, 
he speaks of divine interposition, as if no shadow of 
a doubt had ever crossed his mind. In the lives of 
Plutarch this idea almost reaches the magnitude of a 
system. Seneca had a vivid conception of God's in- 
telligent government. In praise of Jupiter, he says, 
" Will you call him providence, with justice, for he 
it is whose wisdom cares for the world, so that it 
moves on without confusion to fill its task?" Epic- 
tetus declares that any one thing in creation is suffi- 
cient to a grateful mind to convince of a Providence. 
Antoninus came to the conclusion that whatever was 
ordained of God was full of wisdom and mercy. To 
him, a God without benevolence, and intelligent care 
was inconceivable. 

Plautus, the Stoic philosopher, advocated a self- 
surrender to the divine will. Apuleius, an African 
by birth, and a lover of the Platonic philosophy, be- 
lieved that an evil destiny might be averted, and that 
the eye of the All-wise was ever attentive to the dis- 
tress and sufferings of an innocent soul, involving the 
necessity for events to be adapted according to 
merit and justice. Al Ghazzali, the Mohammedan 
philosopher, believed that human adversity was the 



Undercurrents of Idolatry. 21 

bridle of God's love to draw his followers into the 
paradise above. The vast aggregate of Oriental no- 
tions bearing on this point presents but few distinc- 
tions from Western conceptions before the Christian 
era. There are no prominent variations in the creeds 
of all peoples, even if traced back to the world's 
great Spring-time. King Cyrus simply uttered the 
religious belief of all Persia when he said, "The 
gods watch over my safety, and warn me beforehand 
of every danger." Eastern idolatrous belief, in the- 
ory, harmonized with the Bible. The book of Job is 
little more than a polished index of patriarchal belief 
from the Nile country to the banks of the Indus. 
Lactantius, though a Christian, was famed for his 
extensive knowledge of heathen philosophies. He 
vindicates the doctrine of a Providence with the argu- 
ment that it was the accepted sentiment of the ages. 
St. Ambrose likewise contends that the notion was 
universal. 

As idolatry, abstractly, enters as an element in 
the proof of the universal religious nature of man; 
as nearly all the more prominent pagan systems have 
been invested with the idea of a sacrifice ; which is, 
doubtless, a collateral truth in history, intended to 
be the handmaid of prophecy, and speed the incep- 
tion of the atonement ; so this element of truth, like 
a vein of gold, has been found running through all 
ethnic religions. It is shadowed in the mother of 
the gods, in Vesta, in Minerva, in Diana, in the 
Egyptian Isis, and a thousand other forms. Athena 
was seen in the beauty of the morning dawn; Zeus 
was seen in the sublimity of the deep blue sky; 



22 Law and Providence. 

Hephaestos in the sun; Neptune in the sea; ^Eolus 
in the wind; Jupiter in the roaring thunder; Bacchus 
in the vine ; Ceres in the ripening corn. When an- 
cient belief is pruned of its excrescence, nature be- 
comes the living vesture of God ; the illuminated and 
resplendent background, upon which the lights and 
shadows of infinite thought are seen to play. In 
human concerns, it was the same. Mercury was 
recognized in the civilized arts. In music and in 
poetry, Apollo was invoked. In the mechanism of 
metals, Vulcan was the helper. In the sanguinary 
billows of Greek or Trojan war, red-handed Mars 
was always visible. These busy creations of the 
brain show it to be the heart's best friend. These 
are emblems of the divine, having a common origin 
with Grecian oracle and Roman sibyline. They are 
glimpses of the Infinite, coming up from the world's 
dim twilight; faint echoes from the mystic border- 
lands of the supernatural. The truth of a divine su- 
pervision stands out as a bold factor in all mythol- 
ogy, and proclaims itself to be as deep-seated as 
man's moral nature. 

Hence, it appears that revealed religion has only 
taken this truth like it has taken the great moral laws 
of the human heart ; it has more definitely defined, 
has re-promulgated, has authoritatively announced 
it. It comes neither from reason nor experience. 
The gleamings of its light, just like the divine law 
God wrote on the heart of the heathen, shines 
out wherever souls have been born. It is as resplen- 
dent in the life of the American Indian as in the 
reasoning of Plato. It is often found like an unpol- 



The God Sense — Instinctive. 23 

ished diamond in the rudest fetich worship. It is 
not a matter of speculation; its most fitting and elo- 
quent expressions are found in man's inner conscious- 
ness. The belief is inwoven in the very fabric of his 
being. It is one of those grand doctrines, in which 
the impulses of the soul are led to overleap its the- 
ories ; and which, in defiance of all opposing forces, 
continually asserts itself in human history and human 
life. There is one and the same reason for a Provi- 
dence and the immortality of the soul. A thousand 
death-blows may be aimed at its existence, and yet, 
like the soul's thirsting for a higher and better being, 
it still lives, with the impulsive beatings of an immor- 
tal life that will never give over the ambition, that God 
is somewhere near enough to see and understand. 

Such is the wonderful fitness of this belief in the 
human heart and mind that the most sanguinary and 
desperate men reflect its nativity in those unfortun- 
ate times when they cry out for help from a higher 
power, hardly knowing what they say. There is 
certainly in life an instinctive sense of dependence 
and relation with the infinite. The heart's natural 
aspirations for an infinite helper in the difficulties of 
life have given birth, under the warpings of depravity, 
to every false religious system of the globe. This is 
the meaning of man's religious nature. That all 
things work together for good to them that love God 
was felt in the natural heart long before it found ex- 
pression in the Book of Inspiration. 

Look out on the theater of struggling genera- 
tions, where vast multitudes of men have been 
surging from the extreme grounds of barbarism 



24 Law and Providence. 

and enlightenment, knowing little of the past, and 
living only in the shadows of the present, having only 
a possible conception of the great indefinite future; 
above and over all may be heard the voice of that 
universal prayer, "Qur Father," revealing in clearest 
outline what God ought to be, just as he has been 
shown to be in the Gospel of his Son. 

As has been asserted, the doctrine of a Provi- 
dence has not been relegated to the realms of bar- 
barism and credulity ; it owes its highest develop- 
ment to minds of culture. Men of learning and 
refinement have investigated its claims, and found 
them just. Lord Bacon, that universal genius, who 
drove from the face of Europe the last long shadows 
of the mediaeval age, says, "I had rather believe all 
the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the 
Alcoran than that this universal frame was without 
a mind." From Bacon's time, and the intellectual 
awakening which his philosophy produced, when a 
new era of thought took hold on the world, the vig- 
orous reflection of two centuries of development and 
revolution has wrought a grand confirmation of the 
belief of antiquity. 

Relation. — The religious history of the world 
shows very conclusively that there has been too 
great stress laid on its supernatural and miraculous 
phases. The remotest infractions of the natural 
order have been magnified, have been carefully 
garnered in the great storehouse of miracles, and 
have been used as accumulative evidence against any 
extensive influence of secondary causes. It may be 



A Natural Administration. 25 

stated as a principle and method of the divine econ- 
omy that supernatural agencies are never called into 
requisition when natural agencies will answer the 
purpose. Many illustrations might be given of this 
truth. The most wonderful handiwork of the Al- 
mighty may be seen outside the blaze of miracle. 
Human instrumentalities, as they are ordinarily util- 
ized through the ages to bring out the divine pur- 
poses, are indeed lever arms in the world's salvation. 
If this had always been remembered in ecclesiastical 
history, the widening realm of scientific research had 
not offered such a supposed paralyzing to religious 
thought. 

Let us confess the blunder, and as soon as pos- 
sible acknowledge God as the natural administrator 
of the material world, as the successful and intelli- 
gent manager of social, civil, and religious forces. 
The attempted shout of triumph with which the 
skeptic greets the sentiments of the Christian phi- 
losopher when he appeals to any natural system for 
his arguments is not consistent. Christianity vies 
with unbelief in the praise of nature's doings. All 
known laws are but stepping-stones, enabling faith 
to walk up and reach above them to the great Law- 
giver. The sublimest deductions in material science 
may enter as an element in Christian devotion. They 
become the handmaids of religion because they give 
broader and more comprehensive views to human 
adoration. 

A rocky mountain peak, thrown up by physical 
convulsions, presents a dark picture of terrible sub- 
limity. If flowers are planted in the moss of its 



26 Law and Providence. 

crevices, if it is spread over with sunbeams, its 
gloomy grandeur is dispelled. To establish the re- 
lation of things is to bring a soul of unclouded good- 
ness from them. From certain quarters the utter- 
ance is being repeated over and over, This mountain 
of law is immovable; the activities of nature are never 
suspended; the relations of these activities are never 
changed by any external influence whatever. No 
mountain is to be removed, no law suspended, no 
radical change is proposed, but to change some of the 
unnatural relations of the race to these laws. The 
sun in heaven never changes, but shines on in the 
same eternal splendor. See him through all the 
year the same sun, whether in the heat of Summer 
or the frost of Winter, whether through the vapor 
or through the mist, in the clear sky or hid in the 
cloud, as rising in the morning or fading into night: 
these varied relations do not change the sun ; they 
add to human happiness, they change man. These 
activities hold in themselves a moral purpose ; they 
contain a dispensation of love to brook the malignity 
of the adversary, who, in the world's harvest-field, has 
been sowing tares ; they tend to make pure again the 
river of life, so foul from the taint of human history. 
The planets revolve on their axes, and are kept 
in motion. The orderly arrangement of the celestial 
orbs is their glory. A grand security is felt in that 
the ages have pledged that there shall be no clashing, 
no collision, no wandering worlds broken from their 
restraints and rushing blindly through space to bring 
chaos in the material world. But, after all, there 
must have been some master hand to inaugurate 



Mystery no Objection. 27 

these splendors; there must be some presiding intel- 
ligence to bring out creation's purposes, and set the 
coronet of glory on its brow. Law reveals con- 
tinuity, providence reveals God. One needs intelli- 
gence and love, the other an underlying method. 
They are not mutually exclusive, because there have 
been no encroachments, no ancient feuds to be set- 
tled. There is no need of a reconciliation, for there 
have never been any variances. 

There are objections to this intelligent control of 
things, because it is so uncertain, so checkered and mys- 
terious. The same objection might be urged against 
the intelligent and independent operations of the hu- 
man mind. It is not so hard to see the hand of God 
in great things, such as the prosperity of a nation, or 
in calamities, such as the burning of a Boston or a 
Chicago, as in minor affairs. The smaller and less 
important events of life and history often have no 
meaning when viewed separately. Put a hundred 
events of life or a hundred years of history together, 
and there are evidences of a wonderful design. The 
visions of the sheaves and the stars will not explain 
Joseph's incarceration, neither will the darkness of 
his Egyptian dungeon throw any light on the visions. 
It takes Pharaoh's dream and its results to drive 
away the mystery of a life. Moses in the bulrushes, 
with the eye of God on him as the future lawgiver 
of Israel, has no significance in the human under- 
standing- until it becomes a link in the chain of his 
wonderful subsequent career. It is in this way that 
the most adverse circumstances of individual and na- 
tional life find a place in the divine economy. All 



28 Law and Providence. 

history is adorned with such deliverances, and in 
them God displays his infinitude. The Almighty 
vindicates his sleepless guardianship in that he brings 
moral discipline out of the world's disorders. 

It may be said these are natural things. Cer- 
tainly they are natural, intelligently natural. God 
uses nature as the tool of his workmanship. What 
else would he do with it? It is not only reason- 
able but highly probable that God would rule the 
world very greatly through the mediation of natural 
forces. 

The child reaches out its hand to take hold on 
the flame of the lamp ; the mother interferes, and 
saves the child from pain, or allows the hand to go 
near enough to learn the nature of the flame. In 
the child is seen life's inexperience. In the flame, 
the blind force of law. In the mother, the protect- 
ing hand of Providence. 

In this and like illustrations may be found a re- 
lational fact, which rises into the magnitude of a sys- 
tem whose scope can alone be comprehended by the 
reaches of an infinite mind. To keep in remem- 
brance this fact is to know that the world's history 
is not simply a chronological record. Beginning as 
it does with the fair title-page of man's innocency, 
and ending only with the last printed leaf of yester- 
day, it is a very thoughtful volume. Its pages are 
alternately covered with cheering lessons of prosper- 
ity, and the most serious problems of ruin and de- 
cay. The clock-strokes which ring out the spirit 
hour of the present can never banish the perpetual 
fact that the whole book has been inspired with an 



Vantage-Ground of the Present. 29 

infinite purpose. Its words and letters are lit up with 
the luster of a divine benevolence. 

Nations have been wrecked on rocks that were 
half-hidden to antiquity ; but wherever a nation has 
gone down, Providence has built a light-house. 
Thus the causes of every great calamity in the past 
are generally marked and plain, and they become as 
the voice of God, speaking with the authority of his 
finger on the two tables of stone. The world grows 
wiser as it grows older. As time rolls on, the bare 
possibilities of to-day become the realities of to-mor- 
row. Each succeeding generation of men stand on 
the shoulders of the age preceding, and are able to 
discover more minutely the springs of human action. 
God covenanted with Abraham, and we have seen 
fulfilled what Abraham only anticipated. In the de- 
velopments of history, we not only see the operation 
of unalterable laws, but we see where God interposes 
his arm, and we learn where he is likely to reach it 
out in the future. In this manner we may estimate 
what both God and nature will bring out of events. 
The world is now old enough to have laws of history, 
and this age ought to be wise enough to apply them. 

The purely natural course of events may be de- 
termined more definitely than the providential, where 
the mind is able to separate the two. That is, we 
are measurably more certain of the operation of 
God's laws than of God himself. The human mind 
can calculate better upon physical causes than upon 
divinely intelligent causes. 

Yet, so far as they are known, they may be re- 
lied on as producing results consistent for all time. 



30 Law and Providence. 

The divine mind has control of the moral causes 
which operate in society and the body politic. And 
they are so operated as to bring about moral ends. 
National rewards and punishments are apt to be 
meted out in full in this world. Righteousness ex- 
alteth a nation, as surely as the heat of Summer fol- 
lows the directest rays of the sun. On the other 
hand, to use the language of Watson, "In succes- 
sion, every vicious nation has perished ; and always 
by means so marked, and often so singular, as to 
bear upon them a broad and legible punitive charac- 
ter. " At the same time, while corruption may bring 
punishment, while rebellion against the great laws 
of human welfare has been followed by the direst 
penalties, by the desolation of countries and the 
burial of races ; above and over all may be seen sur- 
mounting influences surviving revolutions, leading 
on to some great end. In all the varied and diverse 
aims of men, in all the ambitious schemes of rulers, 
which in themselves are calculated to bring desola- 
tion wherever they are wrought out, every thing 
seems to move under the control of a wisdom which 
keeps them from bringing utter woe to the world. 
While Julius Caesar was building up the fortunes of 
his career in Gaul and Britain ; while Augustus is 
plundering the eastern territory to rebuild and beau- 
tify Rome; while the barbarous Alaric is trampling 
under foot the remains of Greek civilization, and is 
asserting the supremacy of force over the dawdling 
kings and corrupted Church of Italy, leaving the 
world nothing but the crimson sign of rapine and 
war ; while the inexorable logic of events is spreading 



Illustrations — Application. 31 

the shroud of the dark ages over fallen empires; 
while the frenzied hordes of Europe are rushing to 
rescue the shrines of the devoted city, in all this 
the student of history discerns the power of an 
omnipotent arm shaping the world's policies, and 
bringing from them the grandest and most exten- 
sive results for the world's general welfare. While 
the crossing of the Mohammedans from Constan- 
tinople into Turkey, and from Gibraltar into Spain, 
finally caused all Europe to cower before the sword 
of the Saracen, other influences were at work 
bringing from the dread invader a revival of letters 
which is felt until this time, though with a tardy rec- 
ognition. While the burning ambition of Napoleon 
was drenching the kingdoms of Europe in blood, 
another agency was utilizing his life-force in lifting the 
European mind forever from the intellectual bondage 
of Feudalism. These are star gleams of hope break- 
ing across a very dark pathway. It is thus that the 
gold and the ivory and the gems of this shattered 
wall of humanity are carefully gathered up, and used 
in the adornment of a more beautiful temple, whose 
architecture is from the sky. 

Finally, there can be no question of greater inter- 
est to those who have been born and nurtured in this 
free American air than that which asks for an insight 
into our present national surroundings and for a pre- 
vision of our ultimate destiny. What genius shall 
preside in our deliberations? Shall the materialism 
of money and secular concerns sway the helm of State, 
and by legal enactments drive a recognition of the 
divine from our borders? Shall Romanism be allowed 



32 Law and Providence. 

to mold our plastic social life with methods which 
have been disciplined for a thousand years, and lead 
our land back over the per'lous ground of ecclesias- 
tical history? Who shall be helmsman in guiding 
our national ship over the shoals and by the break- 
ers into the deep, peaceful waters? And if the storm 
should gather over us, what great spirit shall stand on 
the rock of truth, call to its aid the spirit of the age, 
notice which way the wind is blowing, where the 
waves are rolling, and, with a steady hand, reach out 
and rescue whatever is adrift? There are forces at 
work in the body politic, in the Church, and in soci- 
ety, which have touched the moving springs of the 
world's history. These forces are likely to bring 
about greater results now than ever before, because 
of their collective strength, and because of the mag- 
nitude of the interests which have gathered around 
them. From whence shall come our confidence in 
the midst of these serious social problems? What is 
it that will make our people cheerful in disaster, calm 
in the hour of peril, or submissive in adversity? 
What voice shall rebuke our corruptions, denounce 
the evils of our civilization, and secure in place of 
them honor and virtue? 

The voice of the common people, coming up from 
our homes and our schools, where the character is 
formed, where the heart is trained under the impress 
that God rules. This is the enkindling, complement- 
ing power in society. There can be no permanent 
social structure built on any other basis. It requires 
an infinite motive to give full scope to the energies 
of a nation's life. Hence those counselors who gain 



American Colleges. 33 

a broad and deep insight into affairs advocate the 
Bible in the public-schools as a matter of expediency. 
Outside the fact of its inspiration, politically consid- 
ered, it is the safeguard of the nation's existence, it 
is the protecting shield of all free government. It is 
the same in the higher departments of education. 
Every thing should be complemented with a recog- 
nition of the divine. As long as our college curric- 
ulums lay hold on ancient thought and philosophy, 
and open out through the languages those attractive 
systems so fatally divorced from modern sentiment, 
it is well to teach in comparison the evidences of 
revealed truth, to show its superiority and fitness. 

In this connection it is an inspiring fact that our 
American university system has risen mostly from 
the impulses of Christian benevolence. Its founders 
have been men born of the noblest voluntary aims. 
Our thoughtful and thorough educators seem to have 
been expecting these serious times, and have given 
great attention to the principles of the divine life. 
The supreme importance of the moral sciences is being 
recognized. Butler's Analogy is becoming the head- 
light of learning. This age is calling for men, men 
who are willing to surrender themselves to a disinter- 
ested and unselfish labor, men who are to perpetu- 
ate the heritage of our fathers, in the remembrance, 
that behind our learning, behind our wealth, behind 
our physical potencies, there is a power which will 
not only speed us toward the promised aidenn, but 
will mak'e the chariot wheels of our enemies drag 
heavily. There is danger that, in the busy enterprises 
of the next century, we may be induced to forget our 



34 Law and Providence. 

colonial instincts. As well might the astronomer try 
to pursue his investigations without the laws of Kep- 
ler. Not only the Church, but the nation, from pri- 
vate conviction co-operating with God, is clearly the 
mission of the new age. 



Chapter II. 

OBSERVATIONS ON THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE 

WORLD. 

IT is not so hard to see wherein the past has blun- 
dered as to profit by these blunders. The state- 
ment is made good in the fact that, while a small part 
of the territorial world has built its structures of 
government with greater security from the old dan- 
gers, vast portions have gone on, heedless of all 
disaster, and are yet holding to old and fatal way- 
marks, or they are giving way before incoming enter- 
prises. It is no easy task to. study dispassionately, 
and apply the religious influences of the present. 
One is likely to mistake personal whims and prefer- 
ences for the spirit of the age. There is danger of 
being directed by false guides, of unconsciously fight- 
ing against God and declaring, remotely, at least, in 
favor of wrong. There is a tendency of self-seeking 
in human nature giving undue, weight to the particular 
influences under which it has been thrown, magnify- 
ing very greatly the importance of whatever is of 
most interest in religion, in family, or in country. 
Then, again, the equilibrium can not always be known 
in the vibrations of history. It may not always be 
known on which side of the ship to throw one's 
weight for a counterpoise. The first impulse is to 

35 



36 Observations. 

rush toward the center of gravity with the multitude. 
In this investigation, whatever can not be seen and 
corrected, it is proposed to commit to Him who is 
always at the helm of life's great vessel; and then, 
though the multitudes on deck may topple the ship 
and go overboard into the sea, the ship will ride on 
finding new cargoes until the voyage is ended. 

On the face of the religious world new lights and 
shadows are appearing every day. The age is hasten- 
ing, the stream of thought and sentiment is flowing, 
leaving such dim and varied impressions that it be- 
comes difficult to assimilate and fix its marks on the 
mind and heart. The soberest judgment is often at 
a loss to know what elements to trust, what contro- 
versy to shun. It will be impossible, from now on, 
to confine either reasoning or speculation to sectional 
or channeled interests. The world's views are grow- 
ing broader. New means are being employed for the 
interchange of thought and opinion. Peoples are be- 
coming acquainted with each other on a grander scale 
than ever before. As this acquaintance is extended 
men enlarge and lift their views. 

There is a disposition now among all classes, in 
every civilized country, to look forward rather than 
backward; to expect a future greater than the past; 
to reach heights heretofore unattained. . The road to 
these heights is now regarded as an open, free way. 
All men and all nations are now challenged to the 
fullest activity and the highest enterprise. The old 
enthralling powers of will-force and absolutism are 
not very well adapted to the multiplied and intelli- 
gent energies of to-day. Thought-force and reason, 



The Faith of Modern Life. 37 

coupled with the broadest freedom, instead, are re- 
molding life and society. From this cause, perhaps, 
more than any other, the world is taking a hopeful 
view of itself. In all the miseries of our time, in all 
the anxieties filling the souls of Christians, in all the 
perplexities of conscience, in all our national dan- 
gers, in the overwhelming issues which are to be de- 
cided in the crisis of the next century, in all this 
dying away of the principle of life, in all the inva- 
sions of positive and threatening evils, there are but 
few despairing views of the world; there is no great 
uneasiness above that which is natural to human 
endeavor. 

This confidence in the future has been growing 
stronger in all Christian countries since the hour of the 
incarnation. Often when some dreadful and ruinous 
hand was lifted over the Church men expected it to 
die, but it lived. When dissension and rivalry in the 
bosom of the Church often convulsed nations and 
deluged continents in blood, men looked for the fair 
name of Christianity to be buried in the blackness of 
hatred and strife; but it lived. Time and again, when 
selfish interests have been advanced under the sem- 
blance of religion, the world has been smitten with 
the divine wrath. Yet, after the smiting, God said: 
"Cheer up, now; there is hope for the future.' ' 
Hence the world is becoming settled in the assurance 
that whatever God has undertaken will ultimately be 
accomplished. There has been such abundant cause 
for disaster in the past which, somehow or other, has 
been averted. There have been a great many death- 
blows given to the Church which, somehow or other, 



38 Observations. 

have failed of their purpose. Deadly poisonous cur- 
rents have touched the life of religion ; and men have 
said, "Surely this is the fatal hour;" but, mysteri- 
ously, some antidote has been applied, and death itself 
has been vanquished. Time and again, when all ex- 
pectation was lost, the quivering vitals of religion 
have been known to become steady and strong, and 
good has been brought out of adversity and danger. 

The conviction is beginning to pervade the world 
that the same hand which w T as at work in creation, 
bringing order out of chaos, bringing life out of death, 
bringing light out of darkness, bringing something out 
of nothing, has been at work in history; bringing 
comparative order out of the most untoward elements 
of strife and commotion, bringing peace out of relent- 
less war, clearing the mildew and death damps of ad- 
versity from the face of decay, and permitting the air 
of freedom and hope to fan its cheeks into health 
again. This, at least, is the known tendency of things. 
To those who have the care of souls or the burden of' 
a nation's welfare to carry in life, it brings much solid 
joy and rest. They may live and toil in the cheerful 
hope that the sun of righteousness will finally light up 
the dark places of the world, and all men will rejoice 
in the perfect adjustments of intelligence, freedom, 
and religious faith. 

The Orient. — In the Eastern empires the human 
mind has never been lifted from the slavery of an 
iron despotism which holds all activity in abeyance, 
and which presents a form of government little in 
advance of Egypt under the Pharaohs. Start from 
the harbor of San Francisco, go westward till you 



Eastern Countries — Their Condition. 39 

reach the coast of China; then, from the Northern 
to the Southern seas, and for five thousand miles in- 
land lies a region of country, over the face of which 
might be written, "Human stability, inhuman tyr- 
anny." 

There are whole nations, whose intellectual head 
is the priesthood, whose animal body is the common 
people. A human head, an animal body! What a 
cheerless and sad symbol! 

Since the gates of the Celestial Empire have been 
thrown open to the influx of sacred truth and West- 
ern thought, seeds are being planted, which are de- 
signed to germinate into a new and better life. The 
sun can not be said to have risen in those countries; 
but there are streaks of light on the mountain-tops. 
The flush and glow of the world's religion is beating 
down upon its valleys, and illuminating its caverns of 
wretchedness and woe. Old prejudices are wearing 
away. The missionary and the sciences he takes 
with him are no longer suspected. The indications 
now are, that our Western forces Avill unmanacle the 
enslaved energies of the people, and put an end to 
her caste systems and her monarchies forever. 

South-eastern Europe and Africa, — territories once 
glorious under the brilliancy of the cross, are now 
the most pitiable mission-fields on the face of the 
globe. It is one of the marvelous things in the his- 
tory of Christianity, that, after the lapse of two thou- 
sand years, its birthplace should be missionary 
ground. Those lands which first knew the Bible, 
where it was first written, now ask for the Word. 
The very countries where the plan of redemption 



40 Observations. 

was wrought out, now need a religion. The Greek 
Church, and the nominal followers of Christ in all 
Western Asia, need to be taught the nature of relig- 
ion. The cross must now undertake the conquest 
of a land which was the seat of its ancient and most 
glorious victories ; for the Prince of Darkness has 
taken possession of it like the black tents of its Bed- 
ouin Arabs. The mosque of the Moslem now dese- 
crates the sacred hill of the devoted city. Western 
Asia is the cradle of the race, and the nativity of re- 
ligion. It is the earth's most memorable battle-field 
of opinion. Now it must be reconquered in order 
to take part in the coming conflict in which the issues 
of a world are to be decided. 

Southern and inland Africa present a problem for 
solution. Noble attempts have been made to Chris- 
tianize the continent, with little or no success. Mo- 
hammedan missionaries have brought greater bless- 
ings to Africa than all Christendom combined. 
Islamism has gone as a civilizer to the very heart of 
the continent, and claims nearly all the most power- 
ful tribes of the interior. Our African missionary 
movements need reconstruction, and they should be 
aimed at the interior. Inland exploration is now at- 
tracting the world's attention, and it is giving a val- 
uable knowledge of regions which only a few years 
ago were entirely unknown. The next hundred 
years will make a new world of Africa. 

South America, in its missions, has the advantage 
of not having to build on the substratum of dead 
races and civilizations. The native influences are 
more hopeful than in many other mission-fields, in 



European States. 41 

that the desperateness of Oriental thralldom does not 
attain among the nations of the New World. South 
American missionary enterprises are presenting every 
year more cheerful aspects. 

Europe is not entirely free from the ancient order 
of things. The gorges of European society are not 
yet lit up with the ascending light. The shadows of 
the mediaeval time have indeed been lifted. The 
songs of the troubadours are no longer heard. The 
real romance of knight-errantry is gone; and Euro- 
pean serfdom, powerless as it has seemed for a thou- 
sand years, is rising into authority. The Reformation, 
which went hand in hand with a revival of letters to 
lift the nations into a new life, aimed at nothing 
less than universal conquest. That life, however, 
was born and nourished amid stormy times. Europe 
is yet standing on the limits of an age sprinkled 
with the blood of religious wars — an age made 
odious with the sanguinary horrors of the Inqui- 
sition. In the outgrowth of the blessings which 
the world now enjoys, time and again Christ has 
been crucified afresh. The rights of conscience, and 
the humane tolerance of these times, have been 
born amid many throes. For two hundred years, 
history has labored to give them birth like a mother 
reaching out in the dark and struggling with God 
for a life. 

Germany now stands head and shoulders above 
her sister states of the continent in putting into prac- 
tice every appliance of strength to her institutions. 
Her sterling intellectual culture of the last fifty years 
has been wrought into a thing of patriotism, and has 



42 Observations. 

given glory to her banners. German society is 
growing up into a new life. There are intimations 
that it is slowly emerging from the lifeless rational- 
ism which has been the chief item of its history 
for the last century. Germany is at last fully alive 
to the secular policies of Romanism. The old vexing 
and vexed politico-religious questions have often of 
late thrown the empire into commotion. The re- 
sult is, Rome is foiled, and made to feel that there 
are limitations to her ecclesiastical claims. 

Italy lies low under the thunders of the Vatican, 
even since she has learned that thunder never kills. 
The present political freedom of Italy is likely to be 
followed by a direct and powerful tendency toward 
religious indifference. To counteract this the Ameri- 
can Churches are bringing a zealous missionary force 
to bear on the peninsula. 

France, once the mistress of Europe, has now lost 
her prestige. For the last few years she has been 
paying dearly for her rank and notorious infidelity, 
for her rebellion against the ten commandments. 
The stronghold of Romanism is here. From fifty 
thousand pulpits are proclaimed superstitions to rival 
the dark ages. 

Spain, poor Spain, is now a suffering invalid, un- 
able to check the course of a long and terrible dis- 
ease. The skeleton of death which began to grow 
in the reign of Phillip II, is now visible to every eye. 
Spain, to-day, illustrates how a death-blow may be 
struck in times of prosperity, after which prostration 
may be so slow that when death comes men may 
have forgotten the cause. For two hundred years 



European States. 43 

the gangrene of religious intolerance has been eating 
away at the vitals of Spain, and she is now past re- 
covery — almost a corpse among the nations ! An- 
other victim slain ! Another sad lesson wrought out 
by the secular ambitions of Ultramontanism ! 

If England can have Premiers to keep her Arch- 
bishops in check ; if she can have Whitefields and 
Wesleys to rebuke her High-churchmen; if she can 
find American grandchildren, like Moody and Sankey, 
to give skepticism a contradiction when it boasts 
that the slumbering religious faith of England can 
never again be aroused ; if she is able to cut loose 
from the fag-ends of Romanism, she will be a light 
in the pathway of nations. 

It may be said that a new era has been fully in- 
augurated in European history. Yet there are dark 
places in it. Some of the deepest shadows are cover- 
ing the face of the immediate present. As far as 
human eyes can see, it appears to be a slow and con- 
stant dissolution of positive faith and Christian inter- 
est. We can not assert to what extent this decline 
in the inner life of Christianity is to be carried. We 
only know that it exists as a question of awful and 
living interest offering itself for solution. The bitter- 
ness and the rivalry of sectarianism is working no evil 
to be compared with it. Modern theology, tinctured 
as it is so thoroughly with materialism, is sending a 
chill through the sundry social questions of the con- 
tinent. Rationalism has secured its advocacy from 
many pulpits. The foes of the Church are nestling 
in her bosom, are w r arming into activity around her 
altar fires. 



44 Observations. 

Unbelief and a tendency to be engaged in the 
worldly and the sensual, in fact, practical materialism 
in all its forms, seems to be spreading with frightful 
rapidity. The result is a growing indifference to the 
necessity of vital piety and a general neglect of eter- 
nal concerns. The life and power of godliness which 
carried the Church through the stormy times of the 
Reformation is now gone, actually gone. Will Europe 
retake for Christianity the place it once occupied? 
Will it again become Christian as it was two hundred 
years ago? Is the Church doomed to go down amidst 
overwhelming difficulties of a social and political 
nature, difficulties which have always come up from 
the unsolved religious problem of the world? Will 
Europe ever become once more vitally Christianized? 
Her institutions are pre-eminently Christian, her civil- 
ization is built on the granite rocks of the Gospel, but 
the power of a personal religion, to deepen and apply 
to good uses her best customs, is wanting. A fatal 
divorce between Christianity and personal freedom 
lies at the foundation of the antagonism which shake 
European society. To obey Jesus Christ, without 
becoming the slave of a priesthood, is the principal 
point. Clearer and more definite boundaries between 
the civil and the ecclesiastical are needed. A free 
Church is greatly in demand, yet it is not practicable. 
To throw the Churches upon their own resources, for 
the present, would be profoundly revolutionary, and 
would, doubtless, be followed by a disastrous letting 
down of faith and confidence for the future. At the 
same time, it is one of those dreadful measures which 
might arouse and quicken into life. 



America. 45 

American society, so easily changed in its customs, 
bears no resemblance to the settled methods and ways 
of transatlantic countries. Opinions do not take such 
a deep hold on the character here as there. Vener- 
ated customs, to which the people have been con- 
formed for thousands of years, however unequal they 
may be to modern exigencies, are not easily over- 
thrown. That honored belief in the subordination of 
the civil to the sacerdotal, claims the homage of so 
great a number of European inhabitants that the true 
relations of Church and State could not be brought 
about short of a physical conflict. Yet this would be 
better than the stagnation of all enterprises, and the 
hopelessness of the conflicts which the present state 
of things portends. 

AMERICA. 

Historic Forces. — In the busy whirl of our national 
life it is a wise thing to stop and take observation. 
The mariner may be sailing along swiftly and pleas- 
antly, yet he watches the compass, he watches the 
stars, those things which change not. To be sure 
of the port, he determines his position, he finds out 
where he is now. He may have kept his course un- 
changed, yet he knows how an untoward wave may 
change that course, and how, almost imperceptibly, 
the wind may drive him away. 

As the child must have a mother, so the present, in 
a measure, is the offspring of the past. Many prin- 
ciples and opinions which are being propagated now, 
in this country, found their inception and nurture in 
colonial soil. There has been occasion to present 



46 Observations. 

already, in this volume, the resemblance between 
natural bodies and bodies politic. The characteristic 
traits of infancy and childhood are seen in old age. 
Early impressions and beliefs stamp their influence 
on the whole after-existence. The primary elements 
of our social and religious life have in them some- 
thing of the genesis and early development of the 
country. It is a marvel that out of such heterogene- 
ous elements there should come the comparative 
unity we enjoy. Infinite wisdom has certainly been 
at work reconciling the antagonisms. 

Two things are to be deplored in the early settle- 
ment of the American continent — the rigid intoler- 
ance of Puritanism, and a religion of State patronage 
in the Jamestown type of colonies. These relics of 
religious tyranny had followed the colonists from the 
old world, and for a time there was every prospect 
that they would engraft themselves into the civil and 
religious history of the country. In this the colonies 
would only have been true in thought and sentiment 
to European life. But soon after the settlements 
were made permanent, mysteriously, affairs were 
found reshaping themselves. The bitter, persecuting 
spirit of New England was modified before long, and 
the rights of conscience soon gained the supremacy. 
From thenceforward the freest development of relig- 
ious thought and experience was recognized as a 
primary human right. 

After this transforming work was done, two relig- 
ious theories were left at work like leaven in colo- 
nial history; and the subordination of one to the 
growth of the other has given us our glory and made 



Two Colonial Forces. 47 

Europe envious. One element advocated the crown 
and its privileges; the other contended for popular 
rights. One element was organized before it left the 
old country; the other had its foundation in a simple 
compact. One element had a religion of forms and 
ceremonies, and an imposing ritual ; the other had its 
only basis in the Bible. One element caused the 
battle of liberty and conscience to be partially fought 
over again on these shores; the other brought with 
it the rich and immortal qualities of the Reformation, 
the precious germ of human rights, and the true rela- 
tion of the civil government to religion. One element 
came with the " propagation of the Gospel" written 
in its charters, and lived to learn that the spread of 
Christ's kingdom under civil jurisdiction was a dis- 
graceful failure. The other came to America under 
the ban of the same failures in Europe, and wrought 
out the type of our civilization ; and it has a rich fruit 
for its reward. 

The germs of religion were so deeply planted in fed- 
eral soil that they could be safely trusted to spontane- 
ous resources for cultivation. The lack of State sup- 
port in those colonies which adopted the voluntary 
system so early in the history of the country was found 
to be a hinderance of less moment than the segregated 
nature of religious forces. For a time there was little 
connectional interest in the work of evangelism. These 
sectional barriers, producing a spirit of offishness, 
were not taken away until the revival of Whitefield, 
with an overwhelming tide, swept all influences into a 
soul of unity, and brought the people for the first 
time under the power of one thought and one impulse. 



48 Observations. 

From thenceforward there was an American peo- 
ple, held by voluntary bonds, trusting in Christ, and 
perpetuating the truths of the Bible under the im- 
pulse of private conviction. Every great religious 
awakening which has swept over the land, from 
Whitefield's time to our own, has operated like a weld- 
ing force in our historic life. These great movements, 
taken together, reveal a depth of Christian sentiment 
to which Europe has been a stranger since the out- 
burst of the Reformation. Let us pray that this hope- 
ful element may still pervade our national life, and 
that it may mold and move society in the future. 
But to make an estimate altogether from this cheer- 
ful stand-point would, perhaps, lead to a mistaken 
notion of our present religious condition. 

In the intervals of revivals in this country, relig- 
ion has been at a very low ebb, — so low that the 
contagion of error has spread rapidly. Paine and 
Cooper and Jefferson are representatives of a factor 
in American thought. The student of our history 
remembers with sadness the bold inroads of Uni- 
tarianism and Universalism in the year 1800, as a re- 
action against the gloomy scholastic theology of the 
period. Twenty-four years afterwards, the communis- 
tic socialism of Robert Owen made its appearance, 
with its degeneracies of Fouerierism, and Free-love- 
ism, and the diabolical spiritualism of the present day. 
The flood tides of German philosophy began their 
devastations in the year 1840, and the threaten- 
ings now indicate that German rationalism will re- 
peat itself on these shores. The preparative work is 
being successfully done in many parts. Thousands 



Elements of Error. 49 

of the simple and the credulous are being deluded 
by those apostles of materialism calling themselves 
phrenologists. The increase of wealth, the advance 
of culture, the tendency to worldliness, together 
with the evident weakening of religious faith in 
many localities, are powerful conditions for the 
growth of a rationalism as cold and cheerless as 
the grave. 

Our country in many respects presents a receptive 
soil for these foreign forces of Antichrist. Of our- 
selves we have never cursed humanity with a new 
form of infidelity ; but we have gone off into super- 
stitions, and we are given to aping Europe in skep- 
tical thought. 

The Present. — If we are living in the house whose 
foundations our fathers laid, whose walls they saw 
started, let us see, if we can, how this solid work 
stands related to our present improvement and finish. 
We are now on the transition ground from a period 
of stern religious faith which is always inclined to 
force the will of others into conformity, into a pe- 
riod celebrated for its application of a boundless lib- 
erty of 'thought, for its humanity and toleration ; 
whose bright side is in its free and clear views of re- 
ligion, and whose dark side consists in the dangerous 
tendencies of an easy faith. Times of persecution 
for opinion's sake, and times of early national devel- 
opment, have been noted for deep religious feeling. 
In our pioneer life faith was strong, and an undoubted 
precedence was given to the Word of God and spirit- 
ual things. All undertakings were linked in some 

5 



5© Observations. 

way or other with heaven. In the fading away of 
these frontier elements ; in the increased comfort of 
our surroundings; in our favorable earthly situations ; 
in the glamour of prosperity, spiritual indifference is 
likely to overtake our people, and without striving 
against religion we are apt to become forgetful of its 
claims. 

The next step is into a lifeless formalism and an 
absolute unconcern. When one of these periods 
of torpid religious life arrives, thought begins to 
make demands, and reason begins to make advances 
in a way calculated to injure faith. Christianity 
comes to be recognized as a social force rather than 
a regenerating power. 

With all the tendency toward religious indiffer- 
ence in these times, when taken in connection with 
other things, we can not desire to return to the good 
old days. We should seek rather to be free from the 
base element of the tides which move us. Modern 
culture, with its mighty influences in the various de- 
partments of life, can no more be hindered than the 
resistless forces of Niagara. Our only way is to elim- 
inate the evils. Europe, with all its skepticism and 
slumbering religious fires, can not wish for the 
golden age of Luther. Neither can we dream of ex- 
changing what we enjoy now for the condition of 
things fifty years ago. The stream of life never flows 
backward, never stops. It can only be controlled as 
it goes, changed without stopping. 

There are many things leading the spiritual life of 
the American people toward evil channels. 

Religion nearly always becomes identified in the 



Defective Practices — Sentimentalism. 51 

minds of men with the practices of the Churches, 
with their obnoxious tenets, and with the daily lives 
of hypocrites. In a failure of distinctions, the truth 
is thrown overboard, out of repugnance to these 
errors and imperfections. Christianity has never 
been able to present untarnished truth in practice. 
Private Christian life is generally below its immediate 
possibilities. 

There is a large class in every community mak- 
king these discrepancies of life and doctrine the 
fortress from which to drive away all obligation and 
serious concern. Christian life is spoken of as af- 
fording but few examples, and the whole of religion 
is depreciated and shunned. Thus it is often the 
case that undoubted Christian principle is robbed 
of its rightful influence. From this source men 
learn the arts of sacred satire. They are bold to 
seek the indulgence of a silly wit, at the expense of 
Bible truth. They purchase amusement at the ex- 
pense of false renderings of Scripture texts. They 
offer puns on the most solemn doctrines of revelation. 
This degrades sacred truth, in that it begets a familiar 
disrespect, and a carelessness with reference to its 
teachings. Professors take the infection ; and at last 
it produces the fruit of a low religious life, and all 
serious thought and inward conflict is bartered for 
that which is cheapest and easiest attained. 

There is now no lack of reform in private Chris- 
tian life, as well as in society. The advocacy of 
higher attainments in grace is being rewarded with 
success in many parts of the country. Some phases 
of this movement, however, have degenerated into 



52 Observations. 

sentimentalism. We are reminded of the perversions 
of European pietism in the eighteenth century. 

There is a distinction between religious feeling 
and sentimentalism. Tenderness is healthy and nat- 
ural ; sentimentalism is artificial and morbid, vain 
and spoiled. It tries to hide a want of depth in 
moral energy beneath a lauded and forced expression 
of feeling. Strong and manly natures are by this 
means thrown into the counter tendency of the intel- 
lect and of doubt. 

The Church life of this country holds an intimate 
relation to its literature. Man's faculties are com- 
plicated. His needs are manifold. In mastering the 
resources which supply his physical wants, he is apt 
to reshape all the relations of his many-sided nature. 
He can not gratify his purely intellectual wants 
without touching the moving -springs of his soul. 
The various resources of man's earthly happiness are 
not segregated. In the unbounded stores of pure 
and high-toned literature, he gathers strength for 
Christian progress, he develops the spirit-qualities of 
his being, and becomes a better and a wiser man. 

This is the world's golden age of letters. So far as 
it is utilized for the truth, it is man's richest temporal 
boon. When it is subordinated to passion, it is his 
greatest curse. ■ While the sacred literature of this 
country, comprising books and magazines and peri- 
odicals, is vast in the aggregate, wielding an influ- 
ence next to the pulpit, yet its anti-Christian and 
immoral phases are positively alarming. 

There appears to be a growing distaste for solidity 
of thought. Our feverish young bloods are pampering 



Vicious Literature. 53 

a vicious taste in the low and passionate literature 
of the day, beyond which there is nothing more 
potent to sear the conscience and to darken the soul, 
to become the victim of the appetites and to prepare 
it for the perpetration of crime. 

A young girl takes up a dime novel. She reads 
of some heroine of supernatural qualities, who was 
"true to the last;" who ran hair-breadth escapes; 
who was heedless of the counsels of friends, parents, 
and many other sensible people ; and fled, like a bird 
out of Egypt, to cleave to some hero with a marble 
hand. Then she feels an emulation to go and do 
likewise. 

But the reading is for an insight into human na- 
ture. The natures portrayed in sensational literature 
contain the elements of all misery and crime. In 
most novels the plot ends, the interest is lost, at the 
marriage altar. It is well that this is so. Characters 
of the ordinary novel type would not look well on 
the rich canvas of domestic life. The nursery-home 
of virtue and piety is too pure an atmosphere for the 
lustful glamour that must be thrown around the novel 
figure to make it attractive. 

The vicious literature of America is the primary 
cause of more sorrow than any other single influ- 
ence. It is Satan's deepest, darkest, surest snare. 
It often puts on the livery of religion, and stands, 
Janus-faced, to decoy and entrap souls for drunken 
graves and feasts of licentiousness. It awakens and 
calls out the animalism of life, until it is stronger 
than all the moral power of the soul. It pictures 
the heroic and amorous under such relations as to 



54 Observations. 

fire the brain with all that is false and overstrained. 
When disappointment comes, it offers no balm. It 
leaves its victims to pursue lives of drunkenness and 
deathless infamy. Its ultimate is the very depth of 
despair. According to the enormity of this evil 
should be the immensity of Christian labor. 

In the effects of these radical antagonisms to the 
Christian faith there are appearances of disintegra- 
tion. They have already reached an importance 
which it is unwise to disregard. No genius of intui- 
tion will ever check their force. The wisest coun- 
selors are needed to invoke the spirit of the times, 
and bring out agencies by which these dangerous 
streams can be met by counter currents, until they 
shall be sealed in their fountains. 

In the attempted adjustment of Christian methods 
there has been taken away much that had become 
distasteful. There has been an effort to take all the 
remaining gloom out of religion, and array it in 
living adornments. In all Christian work method 
has come to be considered a thing of expediency, 
only bounded by the great laws of right, and it is 
susceptible of the most radical changes. This has 
become a necessity in the instrumentalities of relig- 
ious labor. Such has been the development of our 
activities in the last few decades, such has been the 
speed of our growth, in temporal progress and new and 
startling ideas, that the old order of things has neither 
had time to assimilate itself nor die before the new 
has offered its encroachments. There is now a kind 
of religious and social conflict going on in this coun- 
try between the old and the new, — a conflict between 



A New Order of Things. 55 

parents and children, between representatives of the 
generation past and candidates for the generation to 
come, a conflict between the staid notions and whims 
of old age, and the follies and extravagances of youth. 
The voice of reason and prudence calls for frequent 
changes when it has to do with this seeming hybrid 
social state. This call is answered and measurably 
illustrated by a remarkable change in the tone of the 
pulpit. The constant old-time themes of sin, deprav- 
ity, repentance, regeneration, and atonement, are in- 
terspersed with living discourses on the general duties 
of man, with discussions on the philosophy of Chris- 
tian morals. Argument is taking the place of ex- 
hortation. The finer distinctions of conscience are 
calling for exposition. Polemical theology is giving 
way before a legitimate utilitarianism. 

Whoever is not disposed to accommodate himself 
to this new order must stand out as a venerable anti- 
quary. We offer the precaution that this practical 
philanthropy be not lauded too highly, for its tenden- 
cies are toward indifference, toward cultivating and 
refining the feelings into an ideal affection and a super- 
ficial labor. The old landmarks are the sources of 
that piety which manifests itself in strong efforts and 
constant sacrifices for humanity. 

While there are shadows in our religious sky 
which can not fail to bring their disparagements, seri- 
ous and thoughtful minds are predicting near and 
glorious triumphs for Christianity in the fact that the 
unifying forces of Protestantism are becoming stronger 
and more numerous. The Churches are beginning to 
signify a willingness to shake hands over the chasm 



56 Observations. 

of their differences. The blood-marked battle-grounds 
of the past are now being brought under the richest 
cultivation, and with promises of an abundant yield. 
Only now and then some broken missile reveals itself, 
like the harmless traces of an Indian encampment. 
Here and there are the remains of breastworks; now 
and then a small field-piece, rusted with neglect, 
nothing more. 

The unyielding and literal orthodoxy of fifty years 
ago taught the American spirit to think ; it sharp- 
ened the conceptions in the definition and proof of 
doctrine; but it occasioned many revolts, and degen- 
erated into endless quarrels, and very often into a 
miserable religious pettifoggery. These old-time 
phases of our religious history are being superseded 
by broader, views of Christian life, and a charity 
which is bringing a ready co-operation and a com- 
munity of interests. The people are learning to dis- 
tinguish between the pure flame of evangelical zeal 
and the wild-fire of dogmatism. The genius of Prot- 
estantism is rising superior to that endless contro- 
versy which does no good. That deathless struggle 
to reach concord by theological wrangling, and pre- 
serve the life of religion in statements and formulas, 
has been given over by the great majority. That 
fierce theology which damns and predestinates be- 
cause of minor doctrines is being buried without 
hope of resurrection. Occasionally we find believers 
who are ominously impressed that the foundations of 
religion are giving way in this change; but wher- 
ever the more 'charitable relations are taking hold on 
the hearts of the people, in the place of polemical 



Theology and Jurisprudence. 57 

theology, society moves, if not in a purer, certainlj 
in a freer, religious atmosphere. 

It has been in the sphere of Christian thought as 
in the progress of jurisprudence. Starting with the 
venerable year-books of English history, with their 
pedantry and their nice distinctions, the common law 
has grown out of them, as from a bundle of special- 
ties, into a broad basis of principles; into more 
enlarged and liberal interpretations; into a systematic 
accuracy by rejecting anomalies and deciding cases 
under the general test of principles. The pursuit of 
jurisprudence now embraces those enlightened and 
extensive researches which go to make up the finished 
scholar or the devoted patriot, or which shed a benign 
luster around the brow of the statesman. The stu- 
dent of the law is now furnished with the resources 
of knowledge and eloquence to advocate a pure mo- 
rality, to defend and protect the liberty of the citizen, 
to expound the doctrines which shall insure the per- 
petuity of the nation, to drive back error and check 
the march of anarchy, even at the expense of fame 
and friendship. So in the field of theology. The age 
of quaint and curious argument, of metaphysical pro- 
blems, of scholastic subtleties, has gone by. The old 
logical and crafty hair-splitting has been exchanged 
for the more useful inductions of common sense. 
Never was the desire for unity so universal and so 
real. Mutual recognition was never before made a 
matter of conscience; never before did it come up 
from the great soul-life of religion. It is, furthermore, 
being made vital in the great forces which are now 
welding the Christian sentiment of the country. 



58 Observations. 

There is now almost universal negotiation for union 
among kindred branches of the Christian Church. The 
reunion of the old and new school of American Pres- 
byterianism is a realized demonstration. There are 
intimations that the Presbyterian world will soon be 
one. The Methodists of Canada are being brought 
together. Fraternal relations have now been estab- 
lished between Northern and Southern Methodism. 
Without some unforeseen hinderance, the time is not 
remote when there shall be an organic adjustment 
and union of all, or nearly all, branches of Method- 
ism in the United States. A striking indication of 
the new tendency toward Christian fellowship is seen 
in the British and American Episcopalian movement. 
The free Churches in Europe are also being brought 
nearer together every year. 

The cure of social evils, a work which depends 
largely on members of the Churches in this country, 
is bringing them into personal intercourse, making 
them acquainted with each other's religious methods, 
banishing exclusiveness and building up a community 
of feeling. Union revival efforts, now taking place in 
many cities, towns, and villages, during the Winter 
season, sometimes under the labors and direction of 
lay evangelists; at other times through the plans of 
the ministry, are bringing the people on a common 
basis of belief and taking away all barriers. The 
Sunday-school Union and the American Bible Society 
have been powerful aids in promoting a better state 
of feeling among denominations. The International 
Sunday-school Lesson System has grown up like a 
giant-force to bind and assimilate our American Sun- 



Unifying Forces. 59 

day-schools, until they are swayed by one thought 
and impulse. It puts in the reach of all classes, at 
a nominal expense, the best opinions of history on 
passages of Scripture. It enables Sabbath - school 
workers to become mutual helpers. It calls the 
attention of the world to Bible truth. It utilizes 
the secular press in religious teaching. It gives in- 
spiration to religious thought all over the world. 
The system extends over nearly all Europe, to India, 
Burmah, and China, to the Fiji Islands, Sandwich Isl- 
ands, and to the Indians; and it labors to bring them 
all under the unity of the faith. It is concentrating 
the best talent of the Church on Biblical exegesis. 
It develops the capability of the Church, and secures 
for it a host of trained instructors for the future. 

The Young Men's Christian Association, compris- 
ing a vast army from all denominations, is bringing 
the age under obligations. The divine mind gener- 
ally finds a supply for the world's great needs. 
When it became necessary that America should be 
discovered, Columbus was brought up as God's 
instrument. When it became needful that the art 
of printing should supersede the scribe, there was a 
love-sick swain of Europe to hit on the first sugges- 
tion. It was not until the Church was about to be- 
come tragical in corruption that Martin Luther was 
born. When the world of science was to feel the 
throbs of a revolution, Newton saw the apple fall. 
When Christendom's children were to be taught the 
Gospel, Robert Raikes was found giving the pattern 
in 39 Catherine Street, Gloucester. When the world 
was in danger of losing its apostolic fire, Wesley 



60 Observations. 

and Whitefield thundered over the walls of the 
Church of England, and shouted a pure Gospel to 
the peasants and among the colliers. Among these 
timely and providential needs are the unifying forces 
just mentioned. They are calculated to shape the 
religious element of modern civilization. 

Akin to these, yet of greater significance to the 
general Church, is the Evangelical Alliance ; whose 
moral force in the world of religious thought is be- 
yond all estimate. It was formally organized in 
1846; and its conferences were held successively in 
London in 185 ij in Paris in 1855, in Berlin in 1857, 
in Geneva in 1861, in Amsterdam in 1867, in New 
York in 1872. It has living branches in all the 
principal cities of the world. Its object is to realize 
to its members, and to exhibit to others, that a living 
and everlasting union binds all true believers together 
in the fellowship of the Church of Christ. 

The last conference in New York awakened a 
greater interest in Christian union in this country 
than was ever before known. It touched a latent 
chord in popular sentiment, which went vibrating the 
length and breadth of the land. In this direction, 
the dawning of a brighter day is near at hand. Gray 
lines of light are coming over the horizon. It is for 
Christian people to keep the vigils of the night. The 
evidences are at hand by which we shall be assured 
of the ultimate success of religion, by which the nation 
will become jubilant with thanksgiving and praise. 

In close connection with this great tendency, as 
it partakes in the religious condition of the country, 
are the discussions of the next chapter. 



Chapter III. 



4 

NATURE OF PROTESTANTISM, AND ITS NEEDS. 



ONE of the distinctive features of Protestant 
Christianity is its division into sects. Modern 
Church life, to the casual observer, appears greatly 
disintegrated. As roots of evil sometimes draw 
sustenance and vitality from the soil of virtue, subor- 
dinating that which in itself is good, so the present 
condition of things is the outgrowth of subordinated 
free thought. Sectarianism, in itself, is an evil. It 
limits the progress of the kingdom. It will not be 
known when Christian thought and practice shall 
have ascended to their just claims on the heart of 
man, or when the religious world shall have learned 
to economize its forces. Yet the most hopeful ele- 
ment of the Christian system is the very thing which 
has been the occasion of these endless diversities of 
form and doctrine. The discord which we see around 
us, whatever ill it may have wrought, is a grand 
testimony that Protestant Christianity has not been 
indifferent to the truth. 

In a study of the relative effects of the religions 
of the world on the human character, Christianity is 
known to present vital distinctions from all others, 
in the extent of its influence on the individual life, 



62 Protestantism. 

and in its power over society. The spirit of pagan- 
ism has always been indulgent. It has never taken 
a deep and lasting hold on the heart. Its principles 
have always floated loosely in the popular mind. It 
has never affected the morals of the people to any 
extent. The worship of strange gods could be admit- 
ted in its temples, for these gods themselves were 
often supposed to be in conflict. Paganism never 
quarreled about doctrine, because it had no fixed 
belief. When there is a patroness for every art and 
a presiding god for every pursuit, where every grotto 
is made sacred in the presence of nymphs and sirens, 
where there are mystic whisperings for every house- 
hold, there could be no wrangling about belief, no 
persecution for opinion's sake. Mutual indulgence 
has marked the history of all mythologic religions. 
The Christian religion has always been zealous for 
the truth. It contends for the same system of duties, 
for the same great central doctrines. The fulfillment 
of its prophecies will bring all men to the same 
level, will subordinate all theories to the same infalli- 
ble revelation. It tampers with no sin, compromises 
no principle. 

When such a system as this engrosses the mind, 
it is not strange that there should be martyrs to its 
belief, and that persecution should find her uncon- 
querable victims. Such earnestness, pervading the 
whole life of Christianity, has all along stimulated 
inquiry to the deepest investigations, leading to the 
most diverse conclusions. While such variations of 
Christian belief as find their occasion in the earnest- 
ness with which revealed truth has always inspired 



Polemical Theology. 63 

the heart are not to be deplored, but rather com- 
mended as expressions of the deepest devotion, yet 
we can not look upon the extremes of fanaticism into 
which the Church has been led without many regrets. 

The bitterness of theological dispute has passed 
into a by-word. There are yet those among us who 
believe that dissent from their peculiar views is worse 
than are violations of the moral law. There are those 
who would rather know that a man is a good dispu- 
tant than to know that he kept the commandments. 
The question is not, "Are you a Good Samaritan?" 
but, "Can you argue Scripture?" 

We confess, with shame, that men have thus often 
put God's best and greatest gift to an evil use. If 
the apostles or early fathers were to rise up among 
us they would perhaps need instructions on some of 
the questions now dividing our people. What would 
Paul think to attend one of our country school-house 
debates, where preachers of the same Gospel meet, 
like opposing armies on a field of battle, to bring their 
animosities to an issue; where they meet under all 
the estrangement and jealousy likely to be engen- 
dered in the face of an obstinate controversy; where 
they meet in the excitement of a struggle to triumph 
over an adversary, rather than to investigate and dis- 
passionately make plain the truth; where they meet, 
each urged on by a host of intractable followers who 
have exagerated notions of the importance of the 
question, and who often manifest an anxiety to see 
their hero's opponent goaded to exasperation; where 
they meet to wrangle over the very shreds of doc- 
trine, contending as if heaven or hell hung on the 



64 Protestantism, 

issue, now flushing up, now turning pale under the 
worst passions of bullyism? Paul would certainly pro- 
claim anew the "unknown God." Shame on such 
performances and the men who engage in them ! If 
they were ever called to preach "Jesus and the resur- 
rection," they run risks of losing their commissions 
in descending to a low and miserable controversy, 
where the only result will be irreparable harm to the 
progress of the Gospel. 

The spirit which leads men to this theological 
prize-fighting is akin to that of the braggadocio, and 
deserves the denunciation of all Christian people. 
Wherever we find these so-called students of polem- 
ical divinity, they feed on the air and the empty 
notions of an age gone by. They waste their time 
in tying and untying Gordian knots which a true sol- 
dier would settle with a single stroke of his sword, 
ignoring its trifling mystery. A man may spend his 
time thinking about nothing; he may trouble himself 
and all around him about nothing, affect to be very 
wise and learned about nothing, and go down to his 
grave only having added fire to the feuds of life. 

There was a time when the wearing of veils shook 
the New England colonies to their foundations. The 
saints of the Middle Ages discussed the questions, 
"How many angels may dance on the point of a 
cambric needle without jostling against each other?" 
1 ' Do the angels, in going from one place to another, 
pass through the intermediate space?" The school 
of Gamaliel discussed the profound problems as to 
whether we should say grace once or three times at 
the table; or whether an animal wounded in the lip 



Radical Changes. 65 

should be offered as a sacrifice. Men have descended 
to great depths of credulity when they can look each 
other in the face and seriously discuss the difference 
between nothing and its next-door neighbor. Theo- 
logical rancor leads to all such insane and trifling 
gibberish. If the divine Spirit be our teacher, we 
shall learn to avoid evil and be careful; and thus, 
being ruled by its dictates, we will find more peace 
of conscience and more skill in the Scriptures than 
by all the angry disputations of a life-time. 

If a man is led by the Spirit, he will know better 
than to throw away his happiness and his hopes of 
heaven for that which profits nothing after it is 
gained. Truth does not require the advocacy of un- 
holy influences, either for its defense or its advance- 
ment. That fierce zeal for opinion's sake, which 
magnifies itself into essential faith, is now confined to 
those hot-headed gospelers who have supposed them- 
selves the aristocracy of God, but who have never 
been wise enough to know why they were born; who 
may never know that they belong to a mediocre class 
of men ; and yet may never be able to perpetuate any 
extensive influence. The old theology of disputa- 
tions has outlived its day. That formal orthodoxy 
which actually threatened to ossify the revealed doc- 
trines in the beginning of this century has been 
mostly overthrown, and more attention is being given 
to the industries of Christian life. Less stress is being 
laid on peculiarities of doctrine than ever before. The 
sharp and rugged forms of dogmatism are not so 
much drawn in the general pulpit. There is an em- 
ulation to meet on the common ground of truth. 



66 Protestantism. 

Modern culture may not be deepening the religious 
zeal of the people, but it is bringing into activity a 
humane and charitable spirit which is gradually plac- 
ing in the background all rigid and binding forms. 

The cardinal doctrines of Scripture are almost uni- 
versally believed. The first six Ecumenical Councils 
expressed for the Protestant world its belief concern- 
ing the nature of God and the person of Jesus Christ. 
All believe in the perfect divinity and perfect human- 
ity of Christ. He is recognized as our only Savior. 
All believe in the doctrines of the Atonement, the 
necessity of regeneration by the Spirit, the communion 
of saints, the resurrection of the body, and future 
rewards and punishments. They have been handed 
down from apostolic times with but little controversy. 
This unity of belief is strong enough to prevent dis- 
integration in the diversity and conflict of subordi- 
nate doctrines. This focalizing of essential truth 
should overbalance all separating forces, and lift the 
Church from the dust and keep it moving. Struggle 
and conflict for ascendency may be toned down in its 
asperities by recognizing the claims of Christian 
courtesy. 

The work of Protestantism for the future is not 
only against sin from without, but for the adjustment 
of internal differences. Now, since we are in less 
danger of being scorched by red-hot polemical rheto- 
ric; since theological training is laid in principles 
rather than in dogmas ; since the tendency is to bind 
up the open wounds of schism with bands of charity; 
since even the deep-laid notion of sacramental exclu- 
siveness is finding fewer advocates every year, and is 



Humanity Progressive. 67 

about to give way before a love stronger than has 
yet ruled the world, it becomes an urgent duty to 
deepen Protestantism in the national consciousness. 
The officialism of sects should accommodate itself to 
this spiritual striving after unity, and so bring the 
varied forces of American Church-life together, that 
its differences in customs and doctrines and methods 
may not hinder, but work out the divine ideal. 

Reasons for Christian Unity. — The Creator has in- 
vested man with capabilities of endless progression. 
Development is the watchword of the race. One step 
is only gained that another may be taken. There is 
no stopping-place, no absolute perfectibility on earth, 
none in heaven among God's creatures. It is said, 
by a great thinker, that one of the fruits of Christi- 
anity is the awakening of a spirit of discontent. 
Man's religious aspirations are to lead him higher. 
To be satisfied with the present is to stop short and 
defeat the divine purpose. Now that the great 
ground-truths of tolerance are standing unshaken 
under the modern superstructure of free thought, 
now that freedom of religious opinion and conscience 
has been gladly accorded to all men, the next object 
is to prevent the endless forms into which freedom 
shapes itself from doing harm. 

Protestantism has been three hundred years in 
asserting its supremacy over Rome. The conflict has 
been so relentless that little time and attention has 
been devoted to its internal structure. Now that the 
victory is gained in evangelistic labor, the body ought 
to be put together, and its inherent weakness cured. 



68 Protestantism. 

The present position of religious life is not assured 
unless it is made the basis of higher attainment. If 
there is rejoicing over the present favorable surround- 
ings of Zion, it should be remembered that we are far 
below Christ's ideal. The application of the revealed 
word to human wants is progressive in its nature. It 
is a work in which the individual may contribute to 
its final triumph. As the present proud state of as- 
tronomy has grown up from the rude notions of the 
astrologer, through Copernicus and Kepler and New- 
ton, so the adaptation of divine truth is continually 
reaching higher results, bringing into operation new 
methods, constantly awakening more potent impulses, 
reaching toward the ideal that all shall "come in the 
faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto 
a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 
the fullness of Christ." 

In the first place, the unity of all believers is 
based on the union which exists between Christ and 
his people. This union is a revealed fact. It lies 
beyond all comprehension, and contains a great mys- 
tery. The fact itself is as evident as any doctrine of 
Scripture. Yet it is a thing into which the angels 
desire to look. We were in him before the founda- 
tion of the world, just as we w 7 ere in Adam before 
we were born. This idea antedates all that is real in 
human comprehension, and is a theme almost too 
holy for mortals. Christ imparts the Spirit to his 
people, and by the great chain of this Spirit they are 
one. This union is illustrated in the Word, by the 
vine and its branches, and by the relations between 
the head and the body, and by the marriage relation. 



The Bond of Faith. 69 

The mystic union between husband and wife, so 
mysterious in its nature, so sacred in its character, 
will not submit itself to the cold analyzings of the 
mind. The strongest bond is an unconscious bond, 
a feeling, a sentiment, a something that was never 
spoken of, which is depended on without ever be- 
coming the theme of thought. The Church is the 
bride of Christ. All believers, constituting the 
Church invisible, have, togetlier, a common life in 
Christ, just as the infant rests in Christ uncon- 
sciously. It is deeper than all conception, below all 
feeling. What a high and holy theme ! 

There is another bond of union, w T hich is clear 
and evident as the noonday, and with which we may 
come into the fullest sympathy. It is the living, 
conscious bond of faith in Christ, as our Savior from 
sin and its woeful consequences. It is only when the 
soul first calls Jesus Lord that it becomes assured of 
its relationship with him. Believers, therefore, are 
members of Christ's mystical body, which is the 
Church. Unity in Christ is based on this spirit. 
Hence the proclamation, ''Ye are the body of Christ 
and members in particular." It is not intended that 
the individual shall be magnified in such a way as to 
destroy the aggregate. The bricks are in a manner 
useless, unless they form the walls of the building. 

The communion of saints is necessary to the body 
of Christ. Christian fellowship is an indispensable 
factor in the redemption of the world. If it is ever 
realized, it must be based on the common purposes 
of the race, and on fellowship with Christ. 

A Christian brotherhood is the highest earthly 



70 Protestantism. 

state. The Millennial Age, with all its glory, is 
nothing more than a brotherhood of interests, a 
brotherhood of aims, of hopes, of desires, a brother- 
hood of plans and of promises, of wants and of joys, 
and, above all, a brotherhood of hearts, animated by 
the same sympathies of being, thrilled with the same 
immortal impulses, rejoicing in the same glorious 
destiny. 

The unity of the Church is not a thing to be 
created. The oneness of Christ's kingdom is not a 
fact to be instituted. It already exists. God's 
people are one. Whoever partakes of Christ's life 
is a Christian, and is a brother to every other par- 
taker on earth. The invisible Church of God con- 
stitutes one family. The requirement is, that its 
members shall live in harmony with it, shall recog- 
nize it by their conduct. 

Nature of Christian Unity. — Protestantism is not a 
failure because of its different methods of administra- 
tion. The Holy Scriptures are not explicit on forms 
of worship. No method of Church government is 
clearly delineated. We are given great freedom in 
these matters to adapt all forms and methods of work 
on grounds of expediency. Denominational distinc- 
tions are consistent with Christian unity. The necessi- 
ties of constitutional liberty do not conflict with even 
the highest ideal phases of militant Churchship. The 
unbounded opportunities of error to propagate itself, 
now offered in every direction, are not chargeable 
with half such disaster as the suppression of it by 
ecclesiastical force. Since men have been allowed to 



Policy, versus Polity. 71 

think freely, and utter their sentiments without re- 
straint, there have been fewer fatal divisions in Chris- 
tendom than ever before. 

There could be no sadder record of modern 
Church history than a suppression of denominations 
by a formal union. We need a policy, but no gen- 
eral polity. We could not make use of a written 
code, or a system of organic laws, if they were pre- 
sented ever so perfect. The Churches of America 
are not in need of union so much as unity. To un- 
dertake to shape the religious opinions of the coun- 
try by ecclesiastical canon would be called rash and 
premature. Faith can not be cut and altered like a 
garment, to suit the prevailing fashion. The growth 
of opinion, to take upon itself higher forms, is nec- 
essarily slow, and an attempt to coerce it into greater 
speed is always fatal. The fate of Christianity does 
not depend on absolute agreement in doctrinal for- 
mulas ; nor does it depend on the ascendency of any 
sect, to overshadow all others, and awe them into 
conformity. These things the Gospel does not need 
or require. 

There are immaterial forces which come into play 
when they are planted in man's nature by the power 
of Christ, which will not permit themselves to be 
made tangible, nor even to be comprehended, except 
so far as an energy can be understood ; and yet they, 
silently and unperceived, lead to results beyond the 
dreams of the utilitarian. Perpetuity to the Gospel 
is given through the organism of the Church ; yet 
this organism does not thereby become the pledge 
of its security and life. The existence of the Church 



72 Protestantism. 

is insured by the life-giving, yet impalpable forces 
which accompany the truth. The many forms which 
it takes upon itself may exist as distinguished from 
its vital unity. It is useless to expect from without 
that which can only arise from within. Wherever 
the germs of the Gospel are planted, though the 
providence of God should scatter them in the winds 
of heaven, if they find a receptive soil, they will 
spring up and grow, and constitute a true Church. 
This will be, under whatever reasonable methods 
they may appear, though they may not have the 
remotest organic connection with the infallible suc- 
cessors of St. Peter, or with the traditional apos- 
tolic line. 

The Church is the occasion of the religion of 
Christ, the receptacle and ordinary dispenser of its 
spiritual forces, the vitalized monument of the world's 
religious life ; but, abstractly, it has never had dele- 
gated to it any of the miraculous graces. No priest- 
hood or ministry has ever suborned the sacred vest- 
ments of Jehovah. The religion of the Lord Jesus 
is equipped with its own authority, and does not at 
all times wait for the recognition of orders. Hence 
unity does not depend on any formal sanction, but 
comes from the depths of a sublime harmony within. 
The Holy Ghost comes direct from God, out of 
heaven, to give the inspiration of unity to the gen- 
eral Church. It comes at right -angles in all the 
earth, — not by way of Europe, or the Apostolic 
See. The Biblical idea of a Church is, that believers 
every-where are a band of brethren, children of the 
same Father, equally sharing the parental blessings, 



Christ's Prayer. 73 

united by the same spirit, having Christ for their 
elder brother; thus being one in life, one in faith, one 
in love, they call each other brethren, and are willing 
to bear each other's burdens. This is the brother- 
hood of heaven's kingdom, the mystical body of 
Christ. Christian unity must bear testimony to the 
world that it is real. It must be the product of an 
unearthly power, whose bold and definite outlines are 
embodied in the prayer of him who said: "Holy 
Father, keep through thine own name those whom 
thou hast given me, that they may be one as we 
are, . . . that they all may be one, as thou 
Father art in me and I in thee ; that they also may be 
one in us ; that the world may believe that thou hast 
sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have 
given them; that they may be one even as we are 
one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be 
made perfect in one, and that the world may know 
that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou 
hast loved me." 

Methods Promoting Unity. — What the precise out- 
ward nature of that unity shall be, in order to fulfill 
the sublime prayer of Christ, we are unable to know. 
Its spiritual significance is more clearly discerned. 
Into this deeper meaning we hope to grow, leaving 
the outer form to shape itself to suit all newly ap 
pearing exigencies. If the inner life is right we can 
safely rely on circumstances for organic adjustment. 

The finer lines of theory are always difficult to 
keep in mind, more difficult to impress on the heart. 

There have always been hinderances in the way of 

7 



74 Protestantism. 

the definite and practical impression of that truth 
which must necessarily be drawn from the soul's holi- 
est oratory. There is a love which goes hand in hand 
with a faith that refuses to be moved ; a love which 
may be active in winning others to its tenets, but 
never stoops to compel the belief of others; a love 
strong enough to endure persecution, and yet would 
scorn to persecute; a love which goes beyond toler- 
ation, and never lays offensive hands on that which is 
sacred to others; a love which opposes that which 
it thinks to be wrong in such a spirit, and with such 
feelings of tenderness that an opponent may be won 
by its candor; a love which unites the highest wis- 
dom with the harmlessness of the dove, which tri- 
umphs over false zeal and avoids indifference. 

There is a tie of union for the Christian world 
like that which binds the members of the family 
together, — the bond of a common origin and parent- 
age, and a common affection from natural relation- 
ship. For each believer and partaker of the divine 
nature to realize the common source of being, and 
the common interest in Christ, with the destiny it 
secures, is sufficient in itself to gladden the world 
with a perfect fellowship. 

There should be no attempt or desire to do away 
with denominational lines, for the results of such a 
procedure could not now be known. It is yet safest 
to stay within old lines, being agreed that there is 
nothing to warrant their continuance. As yet, there 
can be no formulated settlings of doctrine; only a 
compact without diplomacy, without concessions or 
appeals to precedence. Questions of method will be 



• Individuality. 75 

a factor in Christian work till the end of time. 
Method has a rightful expediency for its guide. The 
irresistible attractions of a common aim and purpose 
will harmonize and make consistent all reasonable 
agencies of religious labor. 

We are constituted differently. We have differ- 
ences of taste, of sympathy, of personal peculiarities, 
arising from causes right in themselves. Our traits 
of character are as numerous as the stars in heaven. 
Our personal qualities are as varied as the days that 
roll over our heads. Our individual peculiarities are 
as infinite as are the resources of the God who gave 
them. Man's power in society and in the Christian 
life consists, in a great measure, in the multitude of 
his affinities. 

The endless variety of religious feeling has always 
found its expression in the diversified forms of Prot- 
estant faith. Only when this diversity of feeling is 
intensified into division and separation does it pro- 
duce harm. We can not hope for conformity in relig- 
ious thought any more than we can bring all men 
to our notions in other matters. The Churches are 
to grow up into unity under the appliance of weld- 
ing forces. 

The great law of the spirit is, that Christians are 
subject to each other as brethren, and through this 
subjective relation they strive for the normal condi- 
tion of unity. Efforts in this direction are always 
revealing themselves, though adverse circumstances 
may prevent the fullest desires. The spirit of relig- 
ion is not disintegrating. The difficulty is in the 
fact that men mistake the spirit's teaching. Ecumen- 



7 6 Protestantism. 

ical Councils have been invoked in all ages. Codes 
have been attempted to which all minor divisions 
were expected to bow. Strife for external unity, 
before the internal life was prepared for it, has given 
rise to much heresy. This blunder has hindered the 
true expression of Church-life, and has checked the 
growth of religious reform; but it has never robbed 
the Christian system of the tendency to consolidation. 
Wherever the hinderances are removed the Spirit will 
assert itself as naturally as the rain-drops mingle to 
form the brooklet and the stream. 

Man's spiritual life is the principal thing; though 
it is often recognized as a kind of negative fact, as if 
the inner nature was only found at the end of the 
world of sense, and that its full and perfect develop- 
ment depended on keeping the outward conditions in 
order. The mistake is in acting as if the spiritual 
depended on the earthly. The upper wall has been 
simply adjusted when the foundations were unsteady. 
To whitewash the sepulcher is not to bring life out 
of death and decay. Church history reveals this mode 
of procedure to be one of the consummate strokes of 
depravity. Its only remedial is the grace of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Ecclesiastical law may coerce 
into conformity, may exert a vast physical potency, 
cold and cheerless as the grave, but the warm glow 
of love has never been known to keep it company. 
One of the saddest errors of Church history has been 
to keep men united externally when there was inter- 
nal variance, — a policy which has always been fol- 
lowed by hypocrisy and indifference to the truth on 
one hand, and persecution on the other. The organic 



Uniformity and Unanimity. 77 

union of the Churches of this country, at present, 
would likely drive the life out of truth, would lead 
to stagnation, and, through it, to great corruption. 
Relative to this question, the liftings of Christian 
thought, in the last ten decades, have produced won- 
derful changes. For long periods of time the Church 
has been found trying to shape Christian work into 
an automaton, producing in every exertion about 
the same result. 

This machinery of ecclesiasticism has become so 
rusty and worn that it is now abandoned, and pro- 
nounced of no value, except to sway ignorance. 
The soul of man, with its impulses, can not be 
placed under the control of .machinery. The endless 
variety with which God has adorned both life and 
nature condemns with a high hand the ghastly 
features of uniformity. 

The intelligent world is also losing faith, not only 
in the possibility, but in the desirableness of una- 
nimity, or oneness of thinking. Unanimity in doc- 
trinal belief has always been the companion of 
ignorance. It is no misfortune that differences of 
race and culture and surroundings lead to variety of 
thought. It is not a very deep, but a very import- 
ant, lesson, to learn how the supposed differences 
around us may be recognized as the individualizing 
of the same great truths. No one is sorry that 
we can not believe alike. Independent thinking 
gives richness to religious thought, and calls out the 
many-sided phases of Christian experience. Una- 
nimity is a blessing only when it is voluntary. Above 
all, are we to deplore that insolent hushing of opinion 



78 Protestantism. 

by fear of bulls and anathemas, and that hardly 
less successful method of moral browbeating which 
says to the initiate, " Eat what is set before you — 
believe what is taught you — ask no questions." 
Men who love the freedom of their own minds as 
they love their lives, and are conscious of its re- 
sponsibility, are banished from God's altars by these 
methods. In a failure to distinguish between that 
which is natural and that which is the result of 
depravity, we attempt to bind that which God has 
left free, except by the restraints of conscience. Dif- 
ferences of thought and temperament and feeling are 
put down as stubborn contradictions, as unmistaka- 
ble marks of the lost paradise. 

It is hardly expected that any one shall be sus- 
ceptible of other feelings than his own, but it is 
reasonable to ask a charity which will lay down all 
deadly hostility to that which other thoughts and 
feelings may produce. An elevated taste and per- 
ception is needed, which will give a charm to our 
variety of thought, and drive away the repulsiveness 
of our peculiar views. A culture is needed which is 
thorough and universal enough to grant full justice 
to those whom we may think are in error ; a culture 
which will give every system an honest examination, 
before deciding on its truth or falsehood. Let our 
people study other tenets than their own, and sooner 
or later there will be a sifting of the truth from the 
dross of error. There should be freedom of all 
honest expression, controlled mostly by the respon- 
sibility which attends it, and by that Christian 
courtesy which should keep every believer from 



Christian Practice. 79 

willingly judging others. When we stand personally 
before the solemn bar of responsibility, conscious 
that past prejudices have often kept us from the full 
light of truth, knowing that narrowness and blind- 
ness and passion have led us astray, we are sure to 
become lenient and sparing of our denunciations of 
that which w r e may believe to be erroneous. While 
we may never hope to get rid of the fact of experi- 
ence, that wherever men are in earnest about the 
meaning of the Bible the greatest diversity will show 
itself, we may pray to be kept from dissension, and 
answer our own prayer in the remembrance that we 
are responsible, and too greatly fallible to judge 
others in their honest opinions. 

There should be a new importance given to 
Christian practice,, with less attention to mere dogma. 
The Gospel should be impressed as the revelation of 
a life more than a system of doctrines. The reason 
is, Christian life can be harmonized, and the logical 
inferences of men can not. Religious conduct can be 
brought more definitely within our purview than 
mere abstract opinion. If this course is pursued, 
the Church will make its power felt more forcibly 
on the national life. Secondly, the whole world will 
see that Christianity is finding its actual unity on 
grounds of conscience, and not in the adjustings of 
history, w r here there are so many problems of pre- 
cedence, and so many differences. 

While it is a matter of great moment as to what 
we believe, and while it is dangerous to depreciate 
the importance of knowing the exact truth, it is 
useless to attempt to accomplish any thing toward 



8 o Protestantism. 

the unity of Christendom in the discussion of old, 
unsettled questions. The difference of a single letter 
in two Greek words has divided the Church, and 
convulsed nations. The chasm of opinion is as broad 
and deep to-day as ever before. Confessional ex- 
tremes can seldom be brought together. The im- 
pression of deeper religious convictions, and the 
higher cultivation of the aesthetic feelings, will do as 
much as all the fixing of theory toward the health- 
ful commingling of diverse elements. The silent 
work of the Spirit, which operates in a thousand 
ways, and through instruments which appear weak, 
often accomplishes more than the systematic and 
faultless plans of the scholar. The great positive 
power for which the future of Christianity is asking, 
will not come from organized adjustments alone, 
but from the potency and strength of an inwrought 
spiritual understanding. The science of theology 
needs to be lifted above the bondage of a contracted 
dogmatism, into the regions of Christian fellowship 
and love. All religious thought must have its root 
in positive doctrine ; all spiritual growth must have 
a basis in fixed belief: yet this does not involve the 
necessity of always going down into the deep, cold 
abysses of logic and abstraction. 

The attention of the Protestant world needs to be 
turned from debating matters, which are of some 
importance, it is true, but not necessary to the sal- 
vation of souls. The evangelical spirit should be 
given pre-eminence over all others. There are so 
many lands which idolatry and heathenism now 
darken, that it becomes sacrilege to deprive the 



Religious and Social Life. 8i 

Church of any strength which concerted action might 
bring. No one should be required to lay down opin- 
ion or zeal for the truth, but there are sentiments 
which might be kept in the background at no sacrifice 
of principle or honor. This is asking no more for 
Christian unity than is required at our hands for the 
social compact. Each member surrenders certain 
liberties for the welfare of society. He tacitly agrees 
to give over to society certain natural rights for the 
protection he receives in return. Man's spiritual life 
ought to lead him into as reasonable and humane 
relations as his moral and social being. Every Chris- 
tian ought to be willing to surrender his individual 
privileges for the good of the general Church, if that 
surrender does not require the giving over of an in- 
alienable right. 

The world's religious life needs to solve a problem 
which civil society has already solved, that of the 
rights of the individual as related to the rights of the 
whole body. There are refractory members in society 
who do not receive the punishment that justice de- 
mands; yet for such a reason men do not refuse to 
receive the protection of society. There are impor- 
tant and diverse views concerning political methods ; 
yet for this reason men do not claim that society is a 
failure, and denounce the idea of a social compact 
existing under such circumstances. Men universally 
declare that the common benefits and purposes of 
society are higher than these things. They place 
confidence in the patriotism of a people who are not 
willing to stoop to the destruction of society over 
secondary conflicts. 



82 Protestantism. 

Notwithstanding the manifestly imperfect arrange- 
ments to be found in American Church-life, the uni- 
versal patriotism of love to Christ ought to unite all 
serious Christians into co-operation for the general 
security and growth of the kingdom. Is it a Chris- 
tian's bounden duty to constantly annoy the world 
with his untamed religious hobbies? Does a preacher 
lose his commission if he should fail to present the 
dogmatics of his sect in every sermon ? Does silence 
with reference to denominational views signify that 
we have renounced them? Shall a bigoted vandalism 
forever drive back the common courtesies of Christian 
intercourse? An utter forgetfulness of a few thread- 
bare doctrines would be a great blessing. The little 
truth which might go down with them would pledge 
its own resurrection, and would doubtless come up 
brilliantly free from its present thralldom. 

There is now an urgency that the broad banner 
of established truth shall be elevated higher than our 
regimental ensigns. The great struggle of principles 
should overawe all petty and private variances. There 
should be more generosity and less bitterness; more 
charity and less debate ; more love and less of rash 
judgment; more brotherhood and less mutual dis- 
trust; more of the spirit of the Apostle Paul, who 
would settle every thing without diplomacy, by point- 
ing to the higher unity of all Christians in Jesus 
Christ. May God forgive the man who is not willing 
to extend the hand of fellowship to all who love 
Christ, or in whose faces may be discovered any clear 
traces of the old lineaments. A lesson may be learned 
from the Waldensian Church of North Italy. While 



Recognition — Non-interference. 83 

confident that her form of Church government was 
evangelical, and that her confession of faith was ortho- 
dox, she declared through her assembly of 1855 that 
she would not Waldensianize, but simply evangelize, 
Italy. The instruction given to her evangelists was: 
"Go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, be faithful to 
the Master, and God bless you." This broad policy 
had its response from the other free Churches of Italy, 
who readily recognized the Waldensian Church as a 
means of evangelizing the country. 

For the denominations of America to formally 
recognize each other as agencies in the conversion of 
the country, would be a positive step toward better 
relations. This is of prime importance now, espe- 
cially the recognition of each others' sacraments and 
ministry. A very pressing duty, at present, is inter- 
communion. The time for the fencing of the Lord's 
table has almost gone by in the popular mind. Peo- 
ple of every name and order should meet in a com- 
mon sacrament, and show forth the death of a common 
Lord. It is as impossible for churchly authority to 
hinder approach to the communion-table as to hinder 
an acceptance of the terms of salvation. The fitness 
is based on a personal examination, and is not under 
the control of the ecclesiastic. 

Non-interference would also promote Christian 
unity, because it would deprecate all rivalry. The 
field is the world, and there is certainly room enough 
for all. As long as there is so much unoccupied ter- 
ritory in this country, it is a breach of one of the 
plainest principles of evangelical work to spend talent 
and money in building up Churches where other de- 



84 Protestantism. 

nominations are already established, and are affording 
reasonable Gospel privileges. One of the saddest 
effects of sectarianism is the conflict of rival Churches 
in any one community or town. A village having as 
many ministers as it can support is visited by a new 
representative, with the proclamation that his prin- 
ciples have a right to live as well as others, and before 
long another Church and its ministry is added to the 
already overburdened population. The division of 
labor is an economic principle, but the extremes of 
its application work harm. It impoverishes the min- 
istry, and causes more money and labor to be ex- 
pended in a single place than is justified, when so 
many fields around are lying waste. 

This sad feature of Protestantism has even tainted 
its mission-work. There is no reason why the mis- 
sionary work of. the Church should not present a 
greater unity of effort. The fierce zeal and strife on 
mission grounds have thrown the deepest shadows 
over the cause of Christ. By what authority do peo- 
ple waste the consecrated forces of God, contending 
for a single spot when continents just as fertile are 
left untouched? The dangers in the bitterness of the 
missionary idea appear more plainly when we con- 
sider the magnitude of the harm the sectarian spirit 
would work in heathendom, as compared with its 
results at home. As soon as available, let an inter- 
national council of the Churches be called, and in the 
spirit of reason let it lay down a few plain rules of 
non-interference in Christian work. 

Another duty, still higher in its nature, is co-oper- 
ation. This is eminently a practical and successful 



Value of Primary Truths. 85 

mode of promoting the utmost spiritual unity. In 
our willingness to unite with others on all proper 
occasions, we learn to distinguish them from their 
doctrines, and learn to love them when we discover 
any degree of candor. We are constantly coming in 
contact with men with whom we can make but a 
short journey together along the diverging paths of 
human belief; yet this will not prevent us making 
ourselves delightful and entertaining companions as 
far as we do go together. We can thus bid each 
other farewell, with more pleasant memories than if 
w r e should have taken up the time of the journey in 
thumping theological marbles, or in a battle of ortho- 
doxy. Whenever the moral feelings of a people 
lead them away from a cold, logical play of the 
intellect; whenever they are brought face to face 
with the thrilling themes of redemption — many 
things which now separate and divide them will be 
taken away. 

In the religious history of this country there is a 
growing distaste for the contentious and wrangling 
spirit of dogmatism ; and we are fast approaching a 
decision as to the result of the strife of Christian 
thought. We are learning to trace the central spirit 
of Christianity through its manifold expressions 
around us, and offer only a Gospel of positive and 
living meaning to the hungering thousands. Above 
nearly all else do we need, now, to cling to the great 
primary truths of the Christian system. This world, 
with its vast physical proportions, with its won- 
drous historic character, with its intelligences rife 
with immortal impulses, rolls round the sun, under 



86 Protestantism. 

the central idea that God rules and governs. Nearly 
all of life's affairs originate and rest on fundamental 
conceptions. 

When the traveler goes to China, to become ac- 
quainted with its people and its institutions, he is 
impressed with the stability of things, — the same 
laws, the same methods of government, the same 
great caste system which existed two thousand years 
ago, the same social customs, the same laws of com- 
merce, the same channels of enterprise, the same 
architecture, with but little variation from time im- 
memorial, — a phenomenon of national life which is 
not seen in the Western Hemisphere, where other 
principles are at work. 

In the East, the wonderful stagnation of things, 
and such adamantine stability as is observable every- 
where, has its origin in absolute monarchy and the 
divine right of kings. In Western Europe and 
America, a new set of elemental notions are exer- 
cising their influence, and bringing about a new order 
of things. These notions are embodied in the Magna 
Charta, wrenched from King John in Runnymede : 
I. The right of life; 2. The right of freedom; 3. 
Popular government. These are the principles of 
Western civilization ; and they underlie the political 
and social and religious life of the age. First prin- 
ciples of truth are not easily established; but, when 
once made secure, they are sure to bring about 
abiding results. The notions of liberty which make 
up the substratum of civil life to-day have been a 
thousand years in gaining ground ; but now, since 
they are established, their potency is felt to the four 



Primary Truths. 87 

quarters of the earth. This, to illustrate what is 
meant by the assertion that the Christian system 
can only achieve a speedy victory over the world 
through the constant and conscious leadership of its 
fundamental truths. 



Chapter IV. 

SKEPTICAL THOUGHT. 

THIS age is recognized by the universal right of 
the individual to exercise an untrammeled 
judgment in all things, and to look with his own 
eyes into religion, as well as to override it with his 
philosophy if he pleases. A bold and fearless spirit 
of investigation has characterized the whole of Amer- 
ican history. There is little reverence for established 
opinion. The vigorous, stirring life of our people 
has never given the staid customs and opinions of 
the past time to become so deeply settled as to 
wield any great influence from force of existence. 
The logic of Aristotle, and the philosophy of Plato, 
have but little value because of their age. A free 
press, a free pulpit, and a free platform, are known 
as the enemies of received opinion. The searching 
scrutiny of this critical age beholds one hoary senti- 
ment after another give way. The oldest supersti- 
tions are buried without regret. Old methods are 
thrown down, new ones take their place. The spirit 
of free inquiry has brought about a new era, and 
every department of life is reinvigorated. The rev- 
erence for authority is broken, and many inroads 

have been made on the established faith. There 
88 



Doubt Succeeds Credulity. 89 

is an immoderate freedom and daring in speaking 
and writing of divine things. 

The course of history is, that the boldest unbelief 
dethrones superstition. As knowledge increases, as 
the general mind is prepared to think for itself, the 
conflict of truth is with doubt rather than credulity. 
That the Bible should go down in the blaze of mod- 
ern culture is impossible. That there are breakers 
ahead no one can deny. There is danger from open 
and defiant unbelief. There is danger from that large 
class in society who are trying to forget their doubts 
in the rush and roar of business life. The dark tide 
is flowing on. It is not safe to wait. 

Sources of Skepticism. — 1. One class of the causes 
of American skepticism may be traced to the condi- 
tion of the human mind itself. 2. Another class of 
causes are objective in their nature, and arise from 
the false exhibitions of Christianity. The first gives 
rise to the legion of open and avowed foes around 
us. The second confronts us with an indifferent and 
credulous army of lookers-on. We may not be able 
to decide whether professed friends or open foes have 
most weakened the cause; whether one by their 
faults and superstitions, or the other with their hatred 
have most prolonged the conflict. 

There is in the human heart an alienation of 
thought and purpose from the purity of the revealed 
doctrines, and from the burden of the divine precepts. 
Under such a condition of things it is very easy for 
men to grow up under adverse prejudices and pre- 
dispositions on the side of unbelief. It takes the 



90 Skeptical Thought. 

natural depravity of both mind and heart to suggest 
the impossibility of a revelation from God, or to cause 
the intelligence to stagger at its strangeness. An 
inner alienation of disposition and sympathy often 
leads men to seek satisfaction in other systems of 
belief. It is no surprise, under the circumstances, 
that men should turn back from a revelation which 
makes the native propensities of the human heart so 
uncomfortable with themselves, and which is calcu- 
lated to probe afresh the depraved wound of sixty 
centuries. It is not strange that there should be some 
resentment to a system of laws which criminates man 
in his history and threatens him for the future. The 
whip-tiger in human nature repels that which rebukes 
it. It is to be expected that men should rush into 
the leniency of pantheism, because nature does not 
awaken so vividly those immortal forebodings of the 
unquenched fire and the undying worm. It is no 
surprise that there should be apostles of materialism, 
because it takes the soul out of the body and divests 
it of responsibility. Man is so intensely earthly in 
his disposition and character that it becomes very 
easy for him to disbelieve the plainest truths of the 
spiritual world. 

The mind is more ready to grasp and retain im- 
pressions of solid physical substances than of those 
high and holy truths belonging immediately to the 
divine perfections. It depends largely on the limita- 
tions of material figures for whatever it understands 
of spiritual things. The soul of man, limited by a 
physical agent, can only approximate in its views 
toward the perfection of Jehovah in connection with 



Enchantment of Physical Science. 91 

a succession of such scenes as may be seen by the 
aid of earthly figures. There is no sensible nearness 
to the operations of Divinity but by the analogy of 
that which is known. Jacob saw the road to heaven 
in the vision of a ladder. Christianity and its effects 
in the world are seen in the figure of a tree and its 
fruits. We call Christ a rock, and we hold to the 
glory of his personage in the shape of a crown with 
stars in it. 

The influence of the spirit we designate by fire 
and light, and such other approximations as we may 
find. The personal relation of the soul to Christ, for 
our understanding, is illustrated in the Divine Word 
by the vine and its brandies. There can be clearer 
mental views of such terms as fire, earth, water, 
wood, stone, than of such terms as mind, spirit, soul, 
God. The Creator appreciates this defect, and speaks 
to his children of earth in parables. He wraps his 
truth in the silken folds of allegory, because the mind 
can be more readily fixed on visible and tangible 
things. They are more likely to absorb its powers. 

Now, if to this natural propensity there be added 
a thorough devotion to the investigation of physical 
phenomena, the result will bring us to the source of 
half the so-called scientific skepticism of the day. 
There is no surer, swifter way to warp a man's life 
and character than to shut him up in his chemical 
laboratory, with pick and retort, or with philosophi- 
cal apparatus and telescope to calculate by sines and 
cosines, with no moral truth to move him, or no re- 
ligious fire to warm his soul. The devil in science is 
a subtle beast. He first attracts, then charms, then 



92 Skeptical Thought. 

fascinates, then enchants, then ensnares. He busies 
the brain with material forces until it has no time to 
look out by faith toward the unseen world. He stops 
the devotee at the very threshhold of the spiritual 
temple. 

It is not a difficult thing to become versed in any 
single department of learning. An ordinary mind 
can make grand attainments in any chosen and defin- 
ite field of thought. In order to meet the require- 
ments of higher education, it becomes necessary that 
men devote their lives to some channel of investiga- 
tion. And yet, without great care, these special 
pursuits become ruinous to other sympathies and 
faculties. An adjustment of acquisitions is most favor- 
able to the development of character. An exclusive 
interest in religious matters tends toward superstition. 
Entire devotion to physical laws leads in the opposite 
direction, to a disbelief in any influence outside of 
natural phenomena. The history of the Church re- 
veals that, in the neglect of learning, and in the denial 
of the just influences of the natural world, religious 
thought always drifts in sympathy toward credulity 
and a love for the marvelous. The growth of scien- 
tific research has shown that its greatest votaries have 
sometimes turned worshipers. Living illustrations 
might be given. The study of alternate pages of 
nature and revelation would alleviate alike the super- 
stition of the religionist, and the skepticism of the 
scientist. 

Another outward hinderance to the progress of 
the Gospel in this country is ignorance of the revealed 
plan, as such. There is an unbelief which has stumbled 



Salvation by Faith. 93 

and fallen over the mysteries of the Christian system. 
There is a class of so-called seekers after truth whose 
stubborn requirement is that all may be made plain : 
the Incarnation, the dual nature of Christ, the Trin- 
ity, the divine chemistry of the soul's conversion, 
the processes of the resurrection, and all the minutiae 
of heaven. Oh, how many more ages shall the 
world live before it learns that accepting Christianity 
is like being cast naked into mid-ocean? Your feet 
do not touch the bottom, your hands do not touch 
either shore ; you are given swimming room for your 
faith ! Here lies the supreme and perpetual value 
of Christianity! Salvation by faith is the grandest 
doctrine of the Bible! As many things in nature 
are accepted as matters of fact, and are acted upon 
when little or nothing is known of their nature, so 
in religion, its mysteries are accepted as facts, though 
the human mind may not be able to comprehend 
their analytical significance. It is said that in the 
wilds of Mesopotamia there are water sources known 
to the wild gazelle, for which the Arabs have searched 
in vain for ages. 

The inherent tendency of sin is to open rejection 
of the divine authority. The passions and the lusts 
and the appetites of man are the abettors of unbe- 
lief. Even the rightful propensities of the heart are 
often found forfeiting their allegiance to God, and 
are made to subserve a similar purpose. Human 
pride offers a perpetual protest against the humbling 
conditions of a Christian life. The Gospel reflects 
on man's ability to help himself out of his spiritual 
difficulty ; while, on the other hand, such has been 



94 Skeptical Thought. 

the growth of art and science, and the development 
of mind in the last five centuries, commercial enter- 
prise has so wonderfully ameliorated man's physical 
condition, the temptation is to believe that there are 
inherent spiritual potencies in the race, and that the 
time for an appeal to the revealed authority has 
gone by. The fruits of the energies which have 
been awakened by the Reformation have been mis- 
directed into an argument to dispense with Chris- 
tianity altogether. The material results of our system 
are utilized into a denial of its spiritual truth. The 
greatest impulses which it has awakened are turned 
into arrows to drink its life-blood. 

Objective Causes. — While the institutions of Chris- 
tianity have given to the world the heritage of much 
that it possesses, its exhibitions of life and doctrine 
have not always been pure and commendable. The 
history of Christianity contains the sad record of 
superstitions revolting to human reason, and many 
blunders in rashest fanaticism. In the narrowness 
of patristic times came the destruction of the Sera- 
pion. Millions of lives were sacrificed to the whims 
of religious partisanship in the reign of Justinian. 
Time and again, in the name of the Gospel of 
Christ, temporal interests have been sustained at the 
cost of bloodshed and the oppression of human 
thought. The unfortunate circumstances of mediaeval 
history made Church officialism the enemy of cul- 
ture and progress and discovery. 

From the slow movement of ideas in Europe, an 
intellectual sluggishness follo.wed the Reformation, 



Spiritual Blemishes. 95 

which handed down the generations many crude and 
half- superstitious doctrines. Our misfortune is to 
have inherited some of them. It is disagreeable to 
see them explode in the face of our enlightenment. 
It is never pleasant to have our enemies pointing out 
our imperfections, when there is no other alternative 
but to confess. There has been something of a 
tendency to ignore what many honest minds have 
known to be manifest superstitions. The enemies 
of religion have stepped in, and have undertaken to 
do for us what we should have been careful to do 
for ourselves. And they have not been content with 
an honest purging ; they have gone to the extrava- 
gance of holding up a few untenable and secondary 
facts as representatives of the system. They have 
discovered theological tenets with defective modes 
of proof. They have tried to rush Christianity into 
the conflict, without its prestige, and without its 
central evidences. It will be admitted, by every 
honest thinker, that skepticism has been striking at 
the excrescence of religious history with some 
success. 

This is one of the things which has darkened the 
path of Christian progress, and has furnished the 
occasion for those who have been bold enough to 
offer their thrusts. By it many strong ones may 
have become weak, many weak ones may have 
fallen. The wonder is, the Church ever escaped 
so free from fault, or lived at all. If the Church has 
been endowed with an inherent and sacred life, to 
wade through fire and blood, and over rack and guil- 
lotine, and to survive the revolutions of society and 



g6 Skeptical Thought. 

the fall of empires, and to brook the rage of infidelity 
and devils, and come through so slightly tarnished, 
so far as the weight of such an evidence will go, it 
deserves to be recognized as the world's celestial 
visitor. The Church has been traveling over perilous 
ground. It has passed through the discipline of fires. 
The experience is worth something, withal. 

The fallibility of the Church can not reasonably 
be made the scape-goat of unbelief. It has never 
been the primary cause of doubt, or even the occa- 
sion, except in its corruptions. Yet accumulated 
slanders have resulted in much harm. The tenor of 
Romanism, in repudiating the policy of every free 
nation, has been adverse to the growth of Christian 
principles in enlightened thought. Withholding the 
Bible from the people is rendered into an acknowl- 
edgment of a want of faith in its power to cope with 
advancing knowledge. Many may be thrown into 
unbelief, in the conviction that the world is about to 
be driven into the dangerous citadel of Church infal- 
libility. Every appeal to weak and silly miracles, 
and all enmity to popular evidences, and all deifica- 
tions of the priesthood, and all sale of indulgences, 
are calculated to strengthen and encourage the hosts 
of moral infidelity. Imposture, as it is discovered 
around ecclesiastical altars, will cast its shadows over 
all that is sacred in religious life. These things ap- 
pear from no fault of the Church, as Christ estab- 
lished it. They come up from a source lower than 
themselves, from a race-degeneracy, which has suc- 
ceeded, so far, in tainting alike all institutions of 
time. 



Religionism. 97 

The reality of religion in its power over the life 
has no necessary connection with defective morals or 
the malformation of doctrine. The difficulty is here : 
in periods of sober reflection, man may be taught to 
distinguish a religion of love and purity from its cor- 
ruptions, but in times of individual excitement, or of 
social revolution, the two are always blended. False 
doctrines and scurvy professors have always been 
stumbling-blocks. They are the outposts of infidelity. 
They give the natural heart a chance to ward 
off its obligations for the moment, and finally to 
forget them. 

Another phase of religious life, which often makes 
sad work in the world, is the prevalence of an artifi- 
cial faith, which leads to religionism rather than to 
purity of heart and life. It might be called a strain- 
ing of the religious faculties beyond that which the 
life will permit them to go. It seldom stops short 
of fanaticism, and will sooner or later cause the soul 
to cast off all religious restraint. There are a great 
many minds not given to sentimentalism, and to 
whom a dawdling religiousness is repulsive, who are 
thus repelled, and are driven into other fields of 
inquiry. 

The unsettled relations of Church and State in the 
Old World has been one of the most fruitful sources 
of skepticism. Men of political life are thrown into 
antagonism with the clergy and the ecclesiastical 
canon, and, failing to sift the truth from its misdirected 
external organism, they find themselves, almost un- 
awares, pitted against the most vital doctrines of 

Scripture. The people of the United States are look- 

9 



98 Skeptical Thought. 

ing with the profoundest interest on the solution of 
this problem in Europe. As the matter now stands, 
she is the fruitful nursery of new forms of unbelief 
very likely to cast their shadows on the religious life 
of our own country. 

Skepticism finds another occasion for its activity 
in a protest against the unreasonable assumption that 
the Church may impose her belief by authority. A 
very just ground of complaint. There is not an un- 
reasonable truth anywhere in revelation. Nothing 
which may not be sustained to the limits of moral 
reasoning. And yet science, so-called, is guilty of 
that of which it complains. How many strange con- 
jectures, how many wild chimeras, have gone forth 
under the name of science. Geology has built more 
air-castles under the patronage of science than per- 
haps could be found in the history of the Church. 
Materialism resolves all creation into a primary force, 
and blandly calls it science. It is only a just require- 
ment that the light of reason should shine on the 
doctrines of the Christian system; but it is certainly 
very unreasonable to require the full force of this 
argument at the hands of every believer. A majority 
of those who stand as living witnesses to the truth of 
revelation accepted it primarily from popular con- 
sent. They are not systematically learned in the 
unanswerable arguments of the Christian apologist. 
This being true, I can see no reason why a personal 
testimony to regenerative grace should not be be- 
lieved as the statement of a fact, as in any thing else ; 
and why an aggregate of such testimony should not 
carry with it a conclusive weight. 



Disorganized. 99 

Nature of Skepticism. — The forces of American 
infidelity are, in a measure, segregated. Like indi- 
viduals at a soiree who have not been introduced, 
there is a mutual recognition in the interests of the 
hour, but no understanding, no intimate acquaint- 
ance, no friendship. Skepticism in this country has 
not yet risen to make a premeditated attack on the 
institutions of Christianity. There is no concerted 
action, no settled line of policy. There is not yet any 
single, definite, and overmastering form of unbelief, 
like the rationalism of Germany, under whose patron- 
age all secondary phases of doubt may live. It is 
marked rather by an array of comparatively inde- 
pendent forces, carrying on a skirmish-battle under 
the general brigandage of personal ambition. Skep- 
tical thought evinces considerable strength and prow- 
ess without giving off any thing remarkably new. 
Old ideas are putting on new expressions, and are 
propagated through different policies and methods, 
requiring, in some measure, are adjustment of weapons 
in the warfare against it. It wears a new garment, 
so that it may not be known at first sight. If all 
classes of men can be made to understand the relig- 
ious conflicts of the times, there will not be such 
great difficulty in selecting agencies, and in institut- 
ing plans for the most favorable results. 

There are two classes of errorists in this country. 
One class believes that true science can not be ad- 
vanced without clipping the wings of faith. The other 
conceives that it renders God and the Bible a service 
by depreciating knowledge and research. They are 
represented by the extremes of intense human phi- 



ioo Skeptical Thought. 

losophy and religious fanaticism. The light of the 
first is like the fire-fly of the tropics, it illuminates 
the darkness, but it fails to dispel the great night of 
time. The other is like the volcano, flaming from 
internal commotion, giving out fire and smoke and 
vapor to darken the land and make it more hideous. 
This is the rebellion, so called, between nature and 
revelation, between science and the Bible. It is an 
army of sky-rockets meeting an army of popguns, 
marching to the music of a corn-stalk fiddle. 

Other skeptical forces are not so bold and out- 
spoken; they move with a cautious tread, hesitating 
even to formulate into statement the conclusions 
which wonderful exertions have been expended to 
adduce. I. Of this kind is the far-reaching attempt 
to undermine the doctrine of a Divine Providence. 2. 
In accounting for all forms of life through natural 
selection, or the survival of the fittest. 3. Explain- 
ing all phases of human history in the correlation of 
forces, or the reign of law. And, 4. An attempt to 
find the ultimate of sentient life in vegetable matter, 
and to base human thought itself in materialism. The 
burning up of brain-cells produces thought. The 
mind has no native power of its own. It can not 
exist apart from the physical organ of the brain. All 
intellectual activity finds its basis in the laws of 
sensation. 

If these claims can be sustained, of course there 
is no need of the assertion that man has no soul, no 
immortality, or that there is no God. 

Through the mediation of the exact sciences, 
there is an effort to counterwork a current of opinion 



Christianity Moss-covered. ioi 

in opposition to the revealed doctrines of faith. To 
sustain an opinion, fathered by a desire, that no rev- 
elation from God to man is possible, the domains of 
the metaphysical, the moral, and historical kingdoms 
have been ransacked for material. 

In this task, religion is often patronized as a good 
thing. In fact, as it seems that man must have 
some kind of religious belief, Christianity is to be 
preferred above all others. It is the paragon of all 
worldly systems. It appears very durable, and makes 
a first-class foundation for our social and civil build- 
ings. It is to be complimented for the good it has 
wrought. The Bible is a respectable and high-toned 
volume. It has taught the ages many sublime and 
beautiful things. But it belongs to the world's great 
Spring-time, and is hardly able to satisfy an age of 
such fruition as this. The Bible ought to be revised. 
A form of worship and a set of doctrines able to 
gratify the religious wants of the savage, it is claimed, 
are not able to satisfy the man of culture. The 
progressive theory is, religion is a universal phenom- 
enon of man's being, and its chief glory is the power 
of taking on itself new forms and doctrines to suit 
new popular sympathies. A swift - flowing age, 
which has made useless nearly all that is old in 
other departments of life, can not be expected to 
take much interest in the teachings of a patriarchal 
sheik, or Jewish Rabbi, or a wild old Prophet, or the 
Nazarene Jesus. 

Established facts of science have not so much 
been brought into collision with these Oriental doc- 
trines, which are mostly true; they have simply sup- 



102 Skeptical Thought. 

planted them ; they have disrobed them of their 
utility, like old roadsters turned into the common 
through which runs the railroad. The victory is 
already proclaimed. Christianity is a "century- 
mossed system ;" "already passed away. " What a 
pity ! Just now, as it is reaching out its arms to 
embrace all nations. It appears a matter of surprise 
to many that Christianity has not stepped aside and 
taken its place among the debris and rubbish of 
antiquity. It is fatal to the worshiper of law that 
some things were not born to die, and surrender 
their places to the newest thing out. 

It is a matter of surprise to many that Christian- 
ity should be able to verify itself anew, as occasion 
may require. Sciolism is thunderstruck that the 
marvelous discoveries of material nature have not 
been able to whistle religion down the wind. The 
religion of Christ is supposed to have inbred in itself 
an inherent disorder, leading to its death. This new 
method of metaphysical therapeutics proposes to 
instruct the Christianity of the time in the gathered 
wisdom of the ages. Alas . for the dignity of an 
occasion where the pupil is older and wiser than its 
teacher! It offers to cure its patient by cutting off 
its limbs, and then prescribe a potion which has cost 
the death of philosophy to administer more than 
once in history. The Athenians sneered at Paul, 
and Paul's religion burned a big hole in the Athe- 
nian philosophy. That which is new is not necessa- 
rily an improvement on the old. Governments of 
antiquity may not have solved all problems in civil 
law, yet they have given us a system of jurispru- 



^Esthetics in the Absolute. 103 

dence deserving the gratitude of the latest ages. 
The old Roman law has been a blessing beyond esti- 
mate to modern civilization. The civil code of 
Moses, in its spirit, will never find an equal. Grecian 
and Roman philosophy and literature compare favor- 
ably with any thing that the world has since pro- 
duced. It is no objection to the Bible that God has 
not cut and changed its doctrines to suit the fashion. 
It is not the purpose of the revealed plan to present 
something new and striking, but something truthful 
and permanent. 

Christianity is also being held up before the world 
as unsavory and offensive to the high-toned culture, 
to the aesthetic and refined feeling, of the age. This 
feeling is perceived in a kind of chivalric revulsion 
against the solemn doctrines of desolation and woe 
pronounced on the sinner. The celestial sensibil- 
ities of the natural man have sugared the devil, 
and made him harmless, like a lamb. The most 
solemn and dreadful of revealed truths are cast 
aside, abrogated, under the pretense that the noblest 
sympathies of mind and heart rebel against them. 

This sentiment inheres in the spirit of the times, 
and comes from a like source with that popular 
craving which secular journalism feeds when it de- 
preciates the virtues and magnifies the faults of those 
who are in Church authority, and shows a sovereign 
disrespect toward the most sacred truths of revela- 
tion. From the same source, also, is the antagonism 
to Christian institutions, now beginning to show itself 
in political circles- and in halls of legislation. 

A most noticeable feature of unbelief is its vacil- 



104 Skeptical Thought. 

lating character. It has no fixed and permanent 
plans. Its history reads like the history of all false- 
hood : a series of advances and retreats, now desper- 
ate and bold, now lurking and indecisive, now build- 
ing great fortresses, now leaving them as in flight 
from great danger. 

The first attempt was to explain away the super- 
natural things of Scripture, by giving a natural inter- 
pretation wherever possible, and by referring every 
thing else to the region of myth and tradition. The 
narratives of Abram and Jacob and Joseph and 
Moses, and the miracle-workers of the Bible, are 
placed alongside the legends of Homer, and contem- 
temporary mythologic heroes. 

The next effort was to refer the writing of the 
Gospels to some post-apostolic era, and thus inval- 
idate their claims to credence. Historic criticism has 
defeated each of these arguments. 

A later assault has been made on the person of 
Jesus Christ. The divinity of his nature has been 
doubted. Low and unworthy views of his character 
have been entertained. 

Of this cast of skeptical thought is Renan's 
"Life of Jesus." It is claimed that the exalted ideas 
which strongly filled his mind in the earlier period 
of his life were never realized; and, as soon as Christ 
discovers that his purposes are failing, he surrenders 
to the disappointment, suffers himself to become 
embittered, and descends to the plane of a miracle- 
worker. Martha and Mary put Lazarus in a grave, 
while yet alive, and then send for Jesus to call him 
forth! This is Renan's Jesus, — a man to whom he 



Channing and Parker. 105 

attributes the highest degree of morality in other 
parts of his work ! Only a degree less in blasphemy 
is his wresting of Scripture in the "Life of Paul." 

Skepticism has the advantage of being, in a gen- 
eral sense, negative. Only in a few minds has it 
attempted to meet the reasonable requirements of an 
innovation. It presents itself in disguised sophis- 
tries, and with a multitude of questions. It makes 
thrusts, without telling why it does so. It has never 
offered to fill the world with any thing higher and 
better than Christianity. Its source of hatred and 
activity is that common enmity which is always in 
array against the world's overmastering and divine 
influences. Many of the higher metaphysical doubts 
make up a list of denials : 

1. A denial of a personal cause. 

2. A denial of the testimony of consciousness. 

3. A denial of a providence. 

4. A denial of all primary or intuitional truth. 

5. A denial of all thought-power beyond the life- 
chemistry of the brain. 

6. A denial of all design in nature. 

Under the belief that natural laws are able to 
administer themselves, an infinite purpose is regarded 
as useless, except to explain a few outlying facts; 
and future investigation may even show these to 
belong to the realms of the physical, and doubting 
erudition may be able to dispense entirely with its 
troublesome rival, an intelligent cosmos. We have 
instances in our history of extensive revivals of neg- 
ativism. Every intelligent American is acquainted 
with the illustrious name of Channing, whose vigor- 



io6 Skeptical Thought. 

ous thought and silvery eloquence led many away 
into the dismal and arid regions of semi-materialistic 
socinianism; yet he owes hundreds of his followers, 
and very greatly his influence, to the social and the- 
ological preparation which the stiff, century-dried 
orthodoxy of Puritanism had given him. The tone 
of religious thought at the time had fully prepared 
many minds for the cold intensities of Channing. 

A little later, there was given an opportunity for 
whatever there was of revulsion in the spirit of the 
time, against its lifeless formalism, to be attracted 
and attach itself to the intuitional philosophy of 
Theodore Parker. It would be unfair not to recog- 
nize that the teachings of Parker led to the develop- 
ment of many noble qualities of the natural man. 
While he often declared his independence of all his- 
tory, and broke the bounds of all custom and reason, 
he brought the energies of a powerful intellect into 
its fullest exertion, to arouse into a worship the 
instinctive sympathies of the soul. What an inex- 
haustible fountain from which to draw supplies for 
his wonderful teaching! There was such a warmth 
and glow of love about Parker's doctrines, such a 
mystical strangeness, such a melting fervency, that it 
won on many whose former religious lives had been 
tempered like cold steel. 

Channing and Parker are types of a few restless 
spirits, whose influence on American thought is due 
to the attention which genius always commands, and 
to the appeals to some silent yet needful voice of 
religious reform. They are little more than expo- 
nents of a cast of thought which promises nothing 



Ephemeral Systems. 107 

in the end, because it reaches no definite conclusions 
other than those embraced in the Christian system. 
While it claims to be led on by the promptings of a 
boundless freedom in opinion, yet it appropriates 
about all that divine truth teaches of the heart-life. 
It writes a great many beautiful pages. It appears 
like a Thesaurus of eloquent utterances. Drops of 
water in a Summer shower form a beautiful bow 
arching the heavens — a swift ephemeral vision. So 
these air-castles of free thought, these ropes of sand, 
might be commended for the few grains of truth they 
contain, and for the amusement they afford. It is 
unsafe to risk the destinies of the soul to their pro- 
tection. An empty system can never last. When 
its glamour is gone it must pass away. Every un- 
common tendency which has been started by some 
queer original of the world's brilliants is like fungus 
on a great wall, collected during a night to be driven 
away by the coming sun. Every thing of unnatural 
growth in religious as well as in natural life either 
finds itself arrayed in deadly antagonism with some 
extraneous force or discovers in itself inherent ele- 
ments of self-destruction. False philosophy is like a 
huge wheel, turning on its axis, bringing with every 
revolution the same methods of thought and inquiry, 
and turning each time on an accumulated wealth of 
refutation. 

In the nature of skepticism, a w r ord may be given 
to a new form of opposition now engaging the atten- 
tion of scholars, supposed to be drawn from the 
comparative study of religions. Man's religious na- 
ture, in all parts of the world, has produced remark- 



108 Skeptical Thought. 

able resemblances in its spiritual codes. This fact is 
made the basis of the conclusion that all religions are 
simply psychological phenomena. To show how 
much Christianity has in common with other systems, 
to point out its wonderful affinities and its astonish- 
ing analogies, is to build up a plausible and ingenious 
argument for those who are not familiar with the true 
cause of this likeness. To find the Lord's Prayer in 
the haunts of pre-christian magianism, or to discover 
the golden rule tw T ice uttered negatively in the teach- 
ings of Confucius, is taken as prima facie evidence 
that Christ's spiritual building is not a new one, but 
a patch-work of orientalism. 

Max Muller has undertaken to show the parallel 
between Brahminism descending to Buddhism, and 
Judaism descending to Christianity. The parallel is 
well put, and is rather remarkable ; but it is fortui- 
tous, and can not be made complete. In the Old and 
New Testaments we have such a network of purpose, 
such a miraculous dovetailing, making one system 
so unique in its character that history fails to show 
any exact resemblance. The reasonable fact of the 
unity of the human race will account for all likeness 
of other religions to Christianity beyond that which 
is not explained in the common propensities of mind 
and heart. 

The soul's hungerings are universal. Man is not 
like the beast. The ox fills himself with the grass 
of the pasture and is satisfied. The lion hides in the 
jungle, seeks and devours his prey, then lies down 
in his lair — his beastly appetites all gratified. Not so 
with man. When all this is done he wants food for 



Man's Religious Nature. 109 

the supply of another nature. He looks out into the 
great unseen with yearnings and askings for the divine. 
This spiritual thirsting is forever asserting itself until 
fully supplied. False religions are but misdirected 
impulses of the soul. The world's mythologies are 
but busy creations of the brain, showing it to be the 
heart's best friend. The thousands of forms in which 
religious worship presents itself only reveal how great 
has been the search for the bread of heaven. And 
the points of resemblance are in universal and pri- 
mary truths, such as are suggested by the natural 
wants of the soul. This is what Paul would call a 
"law unto itself." It is creative in its nature. This 
is w r hy it may be asserted with assurance, that God's 
purposes are in no danger of being overthrown. 

We do not desire to leave the impression that 
systematic unbelief holds, as yet, a very wide- spread 
or dangerous influence in this country. In the strug- 
gle of half a century it has gained a foothold. Dur- 
ing the same time the progress of Christian thought 
and experience is beyond computation. A belief in 
Christian principles is so thoroughly infused in the 
masses as to leave them little disturbed by metaphys- 
ical doubts. There may be found in many commu- 
nities individualists who, to appear original, or for the 
sake of oddity, catch up the arguments of skeptical 
thinkers, and use them as shifts of personal responsi- 
bility. In the spread of enlightenment, which always 
fosters a degree of independent reflection, these indi- 
vidualists may be expected to multiply. To educate 
the mind is to prepare it to think for itself and to 
make inquiries. It is impossible to prevent these 



no Skeptical Thought. 

inquiries reaching into the domains of religious life, 
even if it were desirable. The great adversary sows 
tares in the best cultivated ground. Germany and 
all Europe has suffered severely in being unable to 
check unbelief in its inceptive stages. Therefore the 
times look critical. We fear no present, but an im- 
pending danger. 

The treachery of learned unbelief, so called, is 
slowly gathering recruits, is silently taking hold on 
popular thought. The powers of the air are on the 
alert. They whisper no religion, no God, no heaven, 
no hell, nothing around, above, beneath. An irre- 
sponsible definition is given to life, and the grave is 
the couch of an eternal sleep. This is no time to 
fold our arms in the certainties of Scripture prophecy. 
If the conquest of the world is retarded a single day 
by our lethargy, the din of lost souls will be fearful 
in the judgment. This is no time to slumber. We 
are called to meet the requirements of the grandest 
illumination the world has ever known. This is no 
time for lax morality, for intrigue, and double deal- 
ing. This generation is now almost too wicked to be 
curbed by the restraints of vital godliness. It is 
certain that the conflict of the future is of most pro- 
found importance. New means are being discovered 
by which the Gospel is assailed. Dimensions are 
taken as never before known. The half-turbulent 
stream is flowing on. "The day of the Lord is near 
at hand in the valley of decision. " 

Methods for its Overthrow, — In the first place, we 
are to keep in mind that the struggle is not only 



Power of Satan. hi 

against the arguments and the logic of other minds 
honestly in search of truth, but the conflict is partly 
with the unseen and evil powers; against whom, if 
left unaided, human energies can be subordinated at 
will, and the most dreadful consequences may ensue. 
The truth in human history was not born for unhin- 
dered progress. The world has always been under 
the influence of opposing forces. The introduction 
of sin into the world implied a long and arduous 
struggle between truth and error, between light and 
darkness. The contest has been maintained, stern, 
hot, relentless. The past holds up its bloody hand, 
and we turn pale before the evidences of so long and 
cruel a conflict; and, when the present grapples the 
same weapons so firmly, we shudder for the future. 
The powers of evil are no mean rivals to the warrior 
hosts of God. They are often able to lift the facul- 
ties of the mind from their balance, and almost com- 
pel the reluctant soul to do their bidding. This 
world is yet subjected to the destructive energies of 
hell. A wail of deathless souls in sin comes up 
from every nation, and almost every fireside. 

That great volume of human misery, whose title- 
page is the sad story of Eden, has for its closing 
sentence, if yet written, "All hail, futurity! The 
accusing spirit, with a pen of fire, is ready to chron- 
icle the dire events of another six thousand years." 
Milton had a conception of the reality, when Ga- 
briel asks : 

" Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed 
To thy transgressions?'"' 



ii2 Skeptical Thought. 

Then Satan answers: 

" Let him surer bar 
His iron gates, if he intends our stay 
In that dark durance." 

In the conflict with unbelief, which may widen 
and deepen to superhuman proportions, our chief 
reliance is in the divine arm. As sure as there is a 
God in heaven, universal harmony will at last prevail. 
If, on account of sin, Christ was made to walk the 
earth, weary, footsore, houseless, homeless, he is yet 
the builder of a house not made with hands. In the 
grandeur of his lowly mission, his power was not 
half exerted. He is now able to stand on a loftier 
summit than that of Tabor, able to walk on a 
mightier sea than that of Galilee, able to withstand 
the malice of a universe of such worlds as this. 
Omnipotence and mercy are pledged that the condi- 
tions of the great covenant shall be fulfilled. Sooner 
or later, a strong hand will be laid on the hilt of 
Satan's sword, with a demand that he shall not un- 
sheathe it. Faith in the ultimate triumph of truth 
may be embraced with all the possibilities of abso- 
luteness. 

While human confidence in supernal agencies 
should be kept clearly in the foreground, there 
should be great care taken to guard against the ex- 
tremes of dogmatic assertion, which disdains to stoop 
to the requirements of reason. The honest skeptics 
of this country are often enlightened, and they can 
not be successfully ruled as children under the supe- 
rior wisdom of the Church. There is more or less 



Honest Skeptics. 113 

of revolt against constituted authority in every fine 
mind. No appliances of a dictational spirit will ever 
wean these doubting Thomases from the error of 
their ways. Every doctrine of Christianity which 
comes at all under the cognizance, and within the 
scope of the human faculties, will only wax more 
lustrous in the severest tests of examination. Sadly, 
there has been so much of the authoritative, and so 
little of willingness to give evidence, even when it 
was at hand, that the world's faith has been threat- 
ened in the very foundations of religion. There are 
thousands seriously troubled as to the reality of 
religion. There are those who never had the evi- 
dences of the truth of Christianity presented to their 
minds, except in such degree as they have been able 
to gather it themselves from the Bible, and from its 
fruits in society and the world; and, in the growth 
of broader and enlarged views in other affairs, these 
evidences often become insufficient for a positive and 
reliable spiritual resting-place. 

That the mind should be so constituted that it 
should need, every now and then, a stronger array 
of systematic evidences, is no misfortune, since it 
inheres in the Gospel of Christ to reassert itself in 
the face of reason, whenever required. 

There are two kinds of temptations ; one of body, 
and another of mind. The latter always presents the 
most insuperable difficulties. Individual doubters 
may have been able, so far as the light has dawned 
upon them, to curb and control every low and vicious 
passion and desire, and they may be worthy exam- 
ples of moral manhood; but they have been made 

10 



ii4 Skeptical Thought. 

to hesitate by the necessity of their surroundings. 
Early life has been spent among scoffers, or among 
unfortunate specimens of redeeming grace, or where 
religion was at so low an ebb that its influences were 
of small consequence. Such as have been shaken in 
their belief by the inconsistencies of professional 
Christian life should receive at the hands of the 
Church the kindest consideration. To meet all rea- 
sonable inquiries, is the task of the Christian world. 
So commonplace does the Gospel become sometimes, 
that many rational difficulties are left unsolved in the 
popular mind. It is unfortunate when religious in- 
structors of the people go on for years, without pre- 
senting the external proofs that the Bible is the 
inspired Word of God. 

If it be claimed that these evidences can not be 
presented except on the assumption of falsehood or 
doubt, the reply is, it is better to recognize doubt, 
as a fact, and meet its demands, especially when such 
unanswerable arguments are at hand, than to ignore 
it, and let it eat like a canker in the religious thought 
of society. An ignorant faith may call this "fighting 
the devil's battles, ,, but the zeal of all healthful 
reasoning requires a candid statement of adverse 
facts. Why should a people be chloroformed as to 
so important a matter as the personal presence and 
influence of Satan in the world? Why should there 
be any attempt to cover up and hide from public 
view any great hinderance to the growth and the 
spread of Christian principles? An ever -recurring 
question is, "Have w r e a revelation at all?" The 
great doctrines of the atonement need repeating. 



The Sphere of Reason. 115 

So do these primary discussions on the foundations 
of our belief need to be rehearsed in the face of the 
world. In the conflict with antichrist, the Church 
should never shrink from apology. The life of the 
Church in the first ages rested on its merits and its 
truth, and very greatly on the ability of the fathers 
to give a reason for the belief within them. As often 
as duty may require, let the Church cheerfully under- 
take the task of exposition, and, as in apostolic times, 
the armory of truth will only be more complete after 
the conflict. 

But whenever the human understanding steps be- 
yond its sphere, and lays under tribute man's religious 
nature, with the claim that the intellect is absolute 
sovereign over the whole man, holding the scepter 
over the emotions and the soul's consciousness, it 
goes beyond the reach of all argument for the truth 
of the Gospel. If it is contended that every thing 
which can not be brought within the cognizance of 
the thought-faculty and the judgment is to be re- 
solved into the unknowable, and repudiated, the first 
thing is to show the fallacy of such a position by an 
appeal to the immortal and unchangeable intuitions 
of the soul. The profoundest convictions of life are 
found emanating from man's spiritual nature; convic- 
tions which are stronger than the intellect or the 
will, and nothing but a plunge into the depths of 
utter nihilism can ever silence them. Socrates, in his 
appeals to the testimonies of consciousness, prepared 
an argument for the overthrow of the philosophy of 
Spinoza before it was born. As long as skepticism 
clings to the notion that reason is arbiter of the uni- 



u6 Skeptical Thought. 

verse, it may be necessary, not only to show that 
reason has a place, but where that place is, and that 
it has no controversy with religious faith. Within 
the limits which God has assigned reason, it should 
be the ultimate of all appeal. Its abuse brings dis- 
grace more surely than to stop short of its limits and 
dwell in the regions of superstition. 

Every thing in the world has its appropriate 
sphere. Each individual thing has its relation to 
all others, and its notch in the universe as well. 
The discords of life and history are for want of a 
proper adjustment of principles. The world's redun- 
dancies are not God-given. Every conflict of natural 
influences finds its cause in human fault and inex- 
perience. Nature itself makes no such blunders. 
When the lark starts to meet the sun he is not likely 
to have the bat for his companion. The owl knows 
better than to go with the eagle when he pierces the 
splendors of heaven. Human reason, whose home is 
in the shadows of this world, need not expect to 
eclipse the wings of faith. It is dazzled when it looks 
in the face of the Son of Righteousness. The puny 
arm of the intellect has never yet taken hold on the 
ordinary mysteries of nature. The proudest scientific 
research has never been able to tell how God tints 
the petals of the rose. There is a mystery in the 
moving of my pen over these pages which baffles all 
the wisdom of man. Skeptical philosophy has for- 
ever struggled to find the ultimatum of its principles. 
With every attempt to get behind phenomena and 
enter the realm of mystery, there has been a failure. 
The unsanctified mind, in its blindness, reaches out 



Limits of Reason. 117 

frantically, hoping to grasp the hand of God, and the 
veil of an intolerable mystery drops down to put an 
end to the struggle. The worshipful goddess of reason 
has been trying all methods to prove her right to the 
world's devotion, and with no success. When left to 
her own resources, she appears with the inherited 
misfortune of having no ultimate basis for human 
activity. Her votaries are seen taking great excur- 
sions through literature and history, then returning 
with doubled assiduity to their studies in natural 
science, with no results except such as will add new 
luster to the Christian name. 

All know r n relations of matter and force, all inves- 
tigation in the material world, should be recognized 
as having a value. Every now and then a nugget of 
golden truth is dug from the rich mines of science. 
The old philosophies are being presented anew, are 
being polished until we admire their beauties. New 
fires are kindled along the pathway of history. Yet 
the revelation which has given man the impregnable 
fortress of a first cause is rejected. The plain way 
of the Gospel which robs man of the glory is refused 
for the struggle to climb up some other way. Like 
a bird in a cage, reason may fly from the bottom to 
the top and cling to the wires, yet every struggle 
exhibits its weakness. It shows that there are boun- 
daries to its activities, a world without, which it is 
not yet permitted to explore. Revelation alone adds 
meaning to creation. ''Through faith we understand 
the worlds were formed by God." Omnipotence 
alone accounts for the origin of matter; and its won- 
derful adjustments are only explained in an infinite 



n8 Skeptical Thought. 

intelligence. Without the idea of a Creator, as im- 
plied in the Bible, the idea of an intelligent moral 
being is an enigma. These are gulfs which the human 
mind, with all its natural powers, could never have 
leaped. This argument should be kept in view 
through the whole controversy. It is easy to use, 
and for the purpose it serves is conclusive. 

True philosophy is sure to aid the cause of Christ, 
because it takes into consideration all the relations 
of life. It deals not only with material facts, but 
moral facts, and facts of faith. It wants to know not 
only that Minerva came from the head of Jupiter, 
but it seeks the final cause of such a procedure. If 
the mountain labors and brings forth only a mouse, 
philosophy repudiates the whole affair. True philos- 
ophy never decides a case beforehand. It recognizes 
a connection of thought which rests on the founda- 
tion of faith. Philosophy, as a method of inquiry, 
rests on facts. It calls to its aid a devout heart as 
well as a clear head and a trenchant intellect. By 
keeping this distinction in mind, endless controversies 
may be avoided. 

A disposition to repudiate every thing which 
reaches out into the domains of faith has resulted, in 
a great measure, from a misunderstanding of its 
nature. In its primary significance, once and for all, 
faith is simple trust. It is not an intellectual power. 
It is not the conclusion of the mind's deductions. It 
is not the acceptance of popular religious opinion. 
It is not the granting of the truth of the redemptive 
theory. It is the coming to Christ and accepting, 
not his nature, but him as revealed in the experiences 



Nature of Faith. 119 

of regeneration. To be hid with Christ in God 
goes deeper than all theory; it is more conclusive 
than all objective evidence; it goes beyond all 
thought. It lays under tribute the whole life, de- 
manding the exercise of the moral faculties, the affce- 
tions, and the conscience, controlling the will, subor- 
dinating the whole man. Faith, as such, has nothing 
to do with philosophy or speculative thought ; yet 
it depends on them for its existence and develop- 
ment. The life of faith grows broader and deeper as 
the grounds of human confidence become more firm. 
To rob the heart of faith would be more sad than to 
rob the mind of reason. Faith can not be coerced 
or driven into terms. It is an act as free as the voli- 
tions of the Almighty himself, yet no one lives a day 
without it. In a temporal sense, it is necessary to 
the existence of society under its present relations. 
In a spiritual sense, it is necessary to the existence 
of the soul's essence. 

It will not be out of place to show how skeptical 
philosophy receives its weapons from its professed 
enemies. There is no way of estimating the benefits 
of the Christian system. What streams of life it has 
started flowing, what barren regions it has fertilized, 
what multiplied influences for good it has started 
vibrating through eternity, will only be revealed on 
the sheen of the Judgment. Christianity has given 
to the modern world its civilizations. It is so inti- 
mately inwoven with American institutions as to be- 
come the guarantee of every right they bequeath to 
the individual, or to the State at large. In its polit- 
ical force it has changed the entire aspect of the 



i2o Skeptical Thought. 

globe. The energies which it has awakened have 
lifted the nations from the shadows of ignorance. 
Our children are rocked under its influence in their 
cradles. They discover its traces in their school-books, 
and in nearly every author of respectability. The 
Christian system has brought to the present age un- 
told opportunities of a social and political nature. 
To go beyond its unconscious influences is to reach 
the boundaries of barbarism. The American people 
live under the constant elevation of its doctrines. 
Our facilities for education and culture are its lasting 
fruits. The impress of its plastic hand is seen in 
every department of thought. It is probable that 
skeptics sometimes owe a sublime morality of life to 
the purity of character which it inculcates. Those 
who denounce it are offering ingratitude to the fos- 
tering mother of nearly all their blessings. 

A constant appeal should be made to the deeper 
needs of the soul, as they are made conscious in the 
life. Wonderful adjustments of supply and demand 
may be seen in nature. The eye gives utility to the 
light, and at the same time, light is made necessary 
to its healthful existence. For the purpose of hear- 
ing, there are conditions in the atmosphere as neces- 
sary as is the wonderful mechanism of the ear itself. 
So with the lungs ; the atmosphere is perfectly 
adapted to supply their need in the work of blood- 
cleansing. The stomach wants food ; all nature rises 
up to furnish the supply. Another marvelous illus- 
tration may be seen in the relations of the animal and 
plant kingdoms. The principal elements of air are ox- 
ygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. In respiration, 



Nature's Law of Demand and Supply. 121 

oxygen and nitrogen are taken up from the atmos- 
phere ; and carbon and hydrogen are given off from 
the lungs. Plants feed on one part of the atmosphere, 
human tissue on another. Plants give off as debris 
that which the animal body needs, and the animal 
body gives off that which plants need. There is an 
adjustment and a mutual dependence ; want on one 
hand, supply on the other. This is God's natural 
economy in the world of matter. But man is not 
only a being with physical requirements. He has a 
spirit nature, and is endowed with religious wants — 
not acquired wants either, but real, inborn endow- 
ments. 

1. The soul needs a First Cause. To know the 
source of all being and life, appeals like an intuition 
to the consciousness. The cravings of the human 
understanding are only completely satisfied when it 
reads, "In the beginning, God. " 

2. Man's universal thirsting for immortality is one 
of his settled experiences. 

3. With our first impressions of society comes 

the conviction that there is something wrong. Its 

sad disorders, its feverish excitements, its lusts, its 

ambitions, its unrest, and its unsatisfied longings, lead 

to the conclusion that the race is now suffering under 

the effects of some great misfortune, is very greatly 

under the control of malignant forces. In centers 

of wealth and luxury, where every physical want is 

gratified, there are haggard countenances, and knit 

brows, and great burdensome anxieties, so deep and 

real as to bring out on the canvas of human life, in 

legible characters, the utterance of the Nazarene 

11 



122 Skeptical Thought. 

Jesus, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Ask 
the man of wealth if the affluence he has gained sat- 
isfies the cravings of his being. The acquisition of 
wealth for its own sake never fails to intensify the 
desire. Many are married to gold, and the cold, 
bright thing never returns the affections that are lav- 
ished upon it. Ask the man of ambition if the am- 
aranth of fame ever brought him any permanent joy, 
or if it satisfied his thirst for glory. Earthly plaudits 
do not bring the desired satisfaction. They are like 
tinseled butterflies crushed in the rude hand of a 
giant. They have no power to assuage the soul's 
consuming spirit, which devours its victim, like vul- 
tures at the flesh of a bound Prometheus. 

All history has been darkened with misdirected 
impulses. Men pamper their bodies, give themselves 
over to the pursuit of ambition or pleasure, and starve 
their souls. We challenge unbelief to bring content- 
ment to the deeper needs of our being. Has any 
thing in the world satisfied these wants but Chris- 
tianity? In the existence of these conscious and 
natural demands of the human spirit materialism is 
overthrown, because they imply a moral sentiment. 
They confront any system which denies man's relig- 
ious nature. 

In the work of apology, there should be a dis- 
tinction between what is essential to the existence 
of Christianity and that which is only relatively im- 
portant. It is not safe to hang the destinies of relig- 
ion on narrow issues, when broad and indubitable 
facts are at hand. Critical unbelief is always glad to 
compare its small details with things of the same 



Science and Revelation. 123 

kind in religion. A favorable comparison in this 
respect is the fortress of skepticism. The Christian 
Church should not be committed to points of detail. 
The reason is obvious. Revelation begins with cen- 
tral truths. From first principles it descends to indi- 
vidual facts and phenomena. It has given a world of 
inferences ; it has impressed unnumbered practical du- 
ties. If the plainest doctrines are found covered with 
dogmatism, if truth in practice becomes tarnished, 
it is because they have come in contact with forces 
adverse to their natural outworking. Science begins 
with the particular, and ascends to the general. From 
its items it deduces principles. Hence the minor facts 
and specialties of science may be established, while 
many of its generalizings may be radically wrong. 

It would be the lamest logic to undertake to over- 
throw the facts of science from its erroneous general- 
ized conclusions. Neither will any investigator of 
material facts stake his discoveries on the certainty 
and the absoluteness of the conclusions he may draw 
from them. The theoretical consequences of a thing 
are very lame proofs for any thing it may be in itself. 
To compare the results of one system, many of them 
abnormal, with the foundations of another, is unfair. 
Revelation is from God, and descends to be very 
imperfectly voiced in the multiplied phases of Chris- 
tian doctrine and practice. Science is from man, and, 
with its multitude of data, it ascends toward revela- 
tion and God. For this reason, if the minor eviden- 
ces of Christianity are weighed against the finished 
bulwarks of unbelief, a great disparity will always 
appear. To give some supposed difficulty with his- 



124 Skeptical Thought. 

tory or science the precedence over the whole mass 
of evidence so closely related to the Christian life 
itself, is to violate every law of reasoning. Any 
attempt to defend secondary truth as absolute and 
necessary to the religious system will result in harm. 
To magnify unimportant matters, such as the dogmas 
which separate the branches of the Church, or to in- 
dulge in low controversy over things of small account, 
only adds strength to that unbelief which began its 
career by breaking with the traditions of the Church. 
Just views of Scripture inspiration are becoming 
more and more necessary. It is time to repudiate 
the doctrine that transforms the sacred authors into 
automatons. There are different styles of writing in 
Scripture, as there is a difference between Milton and 
Young, or between Bryant and Longfellow. The Pen- 
tateuch and the prophecies are dissimilar in phrase- 
ology. The utterances of Paul and the Seer of 
Patmos are plainly distinguished. There can be no 
other explanation for this fact than that the mind of 
the Spirit was given by inspiration to these writers, 
and that they were left greatly to their own resources 
for words and figures of speech. The form of ex- 
pression in which Holy Writ is embodied is simply 
Oriental, and has no sacredness attached to it. The 
linguistic peculiarities of the Divine Word are cir- 
cumstantial and not necessary. They are not eviden- 
ces of its inspiration. The Hebrew and Hellenis- 
tic were not necessarily the chosen dialects of the 
Almighty. Language, in itself, may be immortal; 
but tongues and dialects are human. In course of 
time they metamorphose and die. "We have this 



Revision of the Bible. 125 

treasure in earthen vessels'' — easily marred, easily 
broken, easily destroyed. Historical discrepancies 
and chronological inaccuracies may be looked for 
under the circumstances. I can see no reason why 
they may not be corrected as fast as they are found. 
There are very few reasons against a revision of the 
Word. There are many forms of expression which 
might be changed to suit the rightful sympathies of 
the age without encroaching on the rigid meaning of 
the text. In the historic parts of Scripture, and in 
the prophecies, there is much that would seem inap- 
propriate to use in public, because of the modes of 
expression in which the thoughts are couched. Words 
once used with evident propriety are now obsolete 
and hardly suited to the popular ear. Many valuable 
lessons of the inspired Book contain words which the 
mutations of language have now relegated to the 
realms of the low and vulgar. The Bible itself is not 
responsible for this fact. Neither is it false modesty 
to shun the terse reality of these ancient utterances. 
Modifications are required, because, in many respects, 
we speak a language different from our British fore- 
fathers. We should not be zealous to perpetuate a 
fault in the taste of the English public in the time of 
King James and Shakespeare. 

In comparative exegesis there will always be more 
or less of special controversy. The settling of specific 
objections, so far, in the history of the Church, has 
necessarily been left to the few. A believer may go 
deeper into the nature of things than is possible for 
the skeptic. To make the path of Christian progress 
smooth, to clear away the stumbling-stones, the 



126 Skeptical Thought. 

Church needs men of consummate skill in dialectics. 
The whole intellect of Zion should be utilized as well 
as its moral graces. Ignorance can no longer be ex- 
tolled as a virtue. The full force of infidel argument 
is bound to come before the world sooner or later. 
If it first appears with its full refutation, its evident 
falsehood will check the glamour of its novelty. Chris- 
tianity, through believers, should be able to justify 
its claims in the face of every attack. There should 
be a scientific vindication of the Bible. In this work, 
it will not be necessary to show that it is a text-book 
of science, or a manual of astronomy or geology. 
This is not its purpose. The object of the Word is to 
make known the divine will as it relates to man's 
spiritual interests. Holy men spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost; and the burden of the 
Spirit's revealing was of far more importance than any 
earthly knowledge or any secular concern. Hence 
the argument for the truth of revelation is indepen- 
dent of its scientific accuracy. To vindicate the Scrip- 
tures in the face of reason is to show their purpose. 
The harmony which actually exists between the 
Bible and the discoveries of science has often been 
established in view of a supposed disagreement. Yet 
this work is not necessary, and will not mitigate 
against the conclusiveness of the argument for the 
inspiration of the Scriptures, until the breach is actu- 
ally shown. Learned unbelief is an innovation. It 
is opposed to the ordinary convictions of the people. 
Every law of logic and argument would, therefore, 
require it to come with facts and data, stripped from all 
vagaries. That the zeal of Biblical scholarship should 



Developed and Revealed Truth. 127 

forestall every attempt in this direction, indicates the 
danger to which all false theories expose themselves. 
While the Scriptures may not be expected to show 
evidences of a knowledge of all material facts, they 
may be expected to add a meaning to them as fast as 
science discovers. 

Devout men have been known to utter prema- 
ture lamentations, in the suspicion that the Bible 
might meet some fact of experience which it could 
not explain. Such a thing has never been known, 
and need not be feared. On the other hand, those 
who repudiate the Bible are thrown into a chaos of 
inexplicable facts, such as the world might reasona- 
bly expect to be solved. Man's religious nature, 
the existence of sin, and similar facts of every -day 
experience, become the everlasting enigmas of life, 
in the absence of a recognized revelation. 

It may be claimed, from the firmest principles, 
that there is an eminent fitness in the human mind 
for what is known as revealed truth. There are 
traces of natural adaptability for it in human thought 
and sentiment.* The history of the race universally 
distinguishes developed from revealed truth. A lack 
of natural light is recognized in almost a blind de- 
pendence and submission to that which is believed to 
be a revelation from heaven. That which claims to 
be revealed always has a deeper hold on the lives of 
men. Developed knowledge, or that which has been 
discovered, is only relative. The compass, the art 
of printing, electricity, etc., are valued greatly for 
their utility. This is the measure of their value. 
If new discoveries should supersede and make them 



128 Skeptical Thought. 

useless, they could be exchanged for better appliances 
without many regrets. Wherever any kind of relig- 
ious convictions have become so deep and settled as 
to influence the practice and the customs of a people, 
they are not often laid down without great personal 
struggles. Radical changes in religious views seldom 
come short of a revolution. 

The religions of the Orient have the revealed ele- 
ment for their authority; and to-day, under the belief 
that they are divine, one -third of the human race 
bows in meek submission. 

In one of the caves of Mount Hira, near Mecca, 
Gabriel, the divine messenger, appeared to Moham- 
med, exclaiming, " Prophet of God." Chadijah, his 
wife, unveiled her face, and the figure disappeared. 
"Glad tidings to thee, O Mohammed,' ' she said; "it 
is a good angel. Thou art a prophet of God, and I 
am thy first believer. " His son Ali was the second. 
Thus Mohammedanism started, with the simple the- 
ology, "There is one God, and Mohammed is his 
prophet." Under the inspiration that his authority 
was from on high, he became a preaching soldier. 
Up to this time, over half a billion people have lived 
and died in the belief that Mohammed was the 
prophet of God. 

These are illustrations of the power of an abiding 
trust in revealed principles. We have met, here, a 
world-wide tendency. It is apparent in all false 
religions having any thing of the revealed element 
about them. Revealed truth is the only absolute 
truth known to the world, and is alone fit to ask the 
confidence of eternal interests. The provisions of 



Inlaid Teachings of Paganism. 129 

the Gospel of Jesus Christ are most wonderfully 
adapted to the sympathies and needs of the soul. 
This adaptation secures the perpetuity of our relig- 
ion, without any uncertainty. 

It now appears that the divine mind has been 
making use of all religious systems in the firm and 
triumphant planting of the Gospel. All the broader 
observations of the times take into consideration the 
divine economy in utilizing ethnic religions in the 
mediatorial purposes of earth, They have a propae- 
deutic office in preparing the world for the final vic- 
tory of the cross. There is now a great opportunity 
for the cultured friends of Christianity to throw up 
an advance breastwork of great strength in the field 
of comparative reflection. In the defense of the 
Christian faith, our thought should reach out to a 
thorough study of all kindred systems. The clogs 
of narrowness which now bind us, and all prejudices, 
should give way to the recognition of truth-germs, 
wherever discovered. 

The first elements of redemption are laid deep in 
the teachings of nearly all paganism. Sooner or 
later, there will be a mighty use made of these inlaid 
principles. The tactics of Jehovah are outwitting 
Satan, and confirming him a great blunderer. The 
master-stroke in the sermon on Mars' Hill was to 
turn the Athenian inscription, "To the Unknown 
God," into a present use. So God works, using 
false systems to fix the world's attention on impor- 
tant truths necessary to be known. Take, for illus- 
tration, the idea of a sacrifice and a priesthood. In 
almost all religions, these two elements have attained 



130 Skeptical Thought. 

to a degree of perfection. The worship of ancient 
Rome, Greece, nearly all Asia, Turkey in Europe, 
the barbarous Northmen, Africa, the Islands of the 
sea, the Western World — all have had their sacrifices 
in some form or other, through which they invoked 
the divine favor, or appeased his wrath. Egypt and 
Asia had their hoary priesthoods elevated into an 
unapproachable caste thousands of years ago. The 
Saxons and the Danes and the Vandals of the North 
had their grim priestly characters, through whom 
human victims were immolated on the altar. Druid 
priests danced round their lurid fires, in the vain 
hope that the Source of Being might accept the tor- 
tured 'victim. The Indians of America have their 
sorcerers, and their dim notions of mediation. The 
Aztec civilization of Mexico reared up a grand and 
powerful priesthood, who wielded the scepter of the 
gods, and held human destiny in an uneven scale. 

Under the force of such ideas the world is bound 
by a mysterious chain. May we not conclude that 
God's infinite care reaches out to all his creatures, 
that he has a purpose running through the ages, and 
that, somehow or other, the wandering nations have 
nursed in their superstitions great and vital truths, 
which will, sooner or later, enable them to grasp the 
all-powerful provisions of the Gospel? 

The office of a priest and the idea of a sacrifice 
are generally understood over the earth. 

When we remember that Christ has become at 
the same time Priest, Altar, Victim, Mercy-seat, for 
all who seek the pardon of sin, it may not be hard 
to see how these tainted and marred superstitions 



Various Arguments. 131 

of heathendom may contain germs of truth which will 
grow and flourish when the noon blaze of the Gospel 
arrives. Brethren of the ministry, here is an indis- 
pensable field of inquiry. The Church, to stand, 
must be in possession of a culture and a Biblical in- 
telligence, so broad and deep that it may fearlessly 
embrace the comparative study of religions. 

There are other points, some of which, in range 
of discussion, are too extensive for this volume, 
which, when taken separately, may not be conclusive, 
but collectively they constitute a very strong anti- 
skeptical argument: 

1. A comparison of the social effects of unbelief 
with Christianity. 

2. The worthlessness of unbelief in times of dan- 
ger. In private or public calamities it affords no 
balm, it offers no consolation. No gleam of hope 
shines in anywhere to light up the dark regions of 
infidelity. In contrast with this, the sterling value 
of Christianity is illustrated in the last hours of life. 
There has never been a phase of human adversity in 
which it has not fulfilled every promise and gratified 
the most sanguine hopes. 

3. Science is not the best judge of things out of 
its sphere. 

4. Ask for an equal good in place of Christianity. 
What system promises to bring such glorious and 
lasting fruit? Suppose the Bible should be marked 
with dotage and age and neglected by men. What 
manual of duty so broad and imperative will take its 
place? Where else will the circumstances of human 
probationship be so grandly delineated? Where else 



132 Skeptical Thought. 

such a combination of truths under holy precepts? 
Where else .will be found a guide to the footsteps of 
men so wide, so useful, so sublime, so profound, 
yet so simple and plain? Where another book that 
grasps at the immensity of human ills, and provides 
for the difficulty by stretching its scepter over the 
realms of death ? 

5. Evangelical effort is a great antidote to un- 
belief. The late revivals in England have shaken the 
hoary doubts of fifty years. The vital power of 
Christianity is able to repress the strongest skepti- 
cism. The citadel of our faith is above all controversy. 
The unequivocal preaching of the Word is not to be 
neglected. It should be made first in importance. 
No obstacle should be thrown in the way of the spe- 
cific power of the Gospel. The argument from reason 
will not depreciate or rob the infinite luster from 
absolute theology. While there are imperative sec- 
ondary duties; while many of the plainest teachings 
of revelation are simply inferences, and are so clear 
and unmistakable that, to become heedless of their 
teachings is moral suicide; while w r e hope never to 
grow weary in rearranging and supervising as ex- 
igencies may require, we are to keep in mind that 
direct battling with abstract infidelity is not our 
chief business. Jesus Christ and him crucified is 
to be shouted across the continent unaccompanied 
by any suggestive doubts. Christianity is old and 
time-worn, and to meet unbelief in logical conflict 
is a subordinate duty after all. The upper regions 
of our theology are full of gleaming thunder-bolts, 
made up of the statutes of Jehovah. We labor 



Charity. 133 

under the inspiration that unbelief shall not disturb 
the foundations of our building. It may knock off 
a cap-stone here and there, or tear away the weather- 
cock on our steeple, so that we may not know which 
w r ay the w r ind is blowing for a time. These dam- 
ages can be repaired in the course of time. As long 
as we are secure in our house, as long as we are 
sheltered from the storm, as long as we are warmed 
by our fire, it is not wise to listen to every fool who 
may tell us that we have no house, that it affords no 
protection or security, that our fire is an illusion. It 
will hardly be necessary to take up and destroy our 
foundation to show the dubious that it is really there. 

6. In the clear understanding of Scripture the 
spirit and temper of the investigation figure very 
largely. We are required to approach with reverence 
if we hope to understand much of his will or his ways, 
or in any measure profit by them. It is a law of 
chemistry that there are no affinities unless the con- 
ditions are right. An egg or an acorn, under certain 
conditions, shows the development of a germ. If 
any oae disbelieved the existence of germs in the 
egg and acorn, the evidence could not be given by 
placing both under the same conditions. One would 
require warmth, the other must be buried in the soil. 
A refusal to grant these conditions would be unrea- 
sonable. This law of conditions holds good in the 
spirit-world. God has never yet stooped to have a 
controversy or a quarrel with his creatures. 

Lastly, the work should not be strictly controver- 
sial; should not lack of sympathy for unbelievers. 
Paul was once an unbeliever. He reflected and rea- 



134 Skeptical Thought. 

soned, then doubted, and finally believed. Some of 
the head-lights of the Church have hesitated for a 
time. Honest doubt is the very soul of investigation, 
for which an honest argument is nearly always con- 
clusive. To accompany every endeavor for good with 
charity is philosophical. Charity is the virgin gold 
of our faith, which glitters though set in the world's 
rubbish. 



Chapter V. 



ROMANISM, 



Historic Influences. — A breeze from the ocean 
is always fresh and exhilarating. Its waters are 
never stagnant. No dank and foul odors are ever 
born of its currents or thrown shoreward by its trade 
winds. The reason is, God has taken charge of the 
ocean. It rocks to and fro in the immensity of its 
activities, while its particular waves are the creatures 
of his providence. Human perfidy can not taint it, 
because he has charged himself with its keeping. 
With the Church of Christ it is not quite so. Un- 
washed and fallible hands have handled its precious 
life until the tarnish of sin, time and again, has dis- 
robed it of beauty. 

Every student of history can recall the splendid 
victories of the cross during the first three hundred 
years of Gospel-preaching. How the Christian Church 
started from a little upper room in Jerusalem to wade 
through fire and blood, and over rack and gibbet, 
until a peaceful home had been won through the 
extent of Southern and Eastern Europe, over North 
Africa, through Egypt and Asia, nearly to the banks 
of the Ganges. The rage of infidelity and devils was 
unable to check its force. The proudest orators 

i35 



136 Romanism. 

were found lending their power to the ministry of 
Jesus Christ. Emperors were found worshiping at a 
throne of Grace. Proud temples were built, rich 
prebendaries were endowed. The prestige of great 
virtues settled on the brow of Zion. But almost with 
this glory came the glamour of prosperity to touch 
all her borders, and stop all positive advances in the 
restfulness of a false security. Then followed the 
decay of Christian life, as swift and terrible as its 
growth was glorious. In course of time the spir- 
itual energies of the Church were gone. Her evan- 
gelical fires went out, and she found herself re- 
sistlessly drifting toward the vortex of universal 
corruption. 

The first lull in the conquering energies of the 
Church was the saddest and the most deplorable. It 
not only impeded for a thousand years the further 
victories of the cross, but it left a history, both em- 
barrassing in itself, and fraught with the most mis- 
chievous consequences. The papal world found its 
inception in the decline of vital evangelical Christian- 
ity. From the innate forces of a dying orthodoxy it 
was gradually developed. It crawled, serpent-like, 
through the ages, to position and authority. It un- 
dermined the hereditary freedom of the ancient repub- 
lic by an untiring appeal for centuries. 

Generations came up, and passed away, before 
the force of an unearthly tribunal was able to sway 
even a despotism of influence. The ecclesiastical 
heads of the old Latin Church were at first subjects. 
In the time of Constantine they found themselves 
strong enough to resist his will. Theodosius suffered 



Cause of the Dark Ages. 137 

a rebuke from St. Ambrose, and was compelled to 
do penance. At last the pontifical foot found itself 
on the neck of Rome's emperor. Roman patriotism 
and Roman liberty died away, and there was erected 
in its stead an imperialism of moral forces, so dread- 
ful as to crush out even the hopeful individualism of 
the old ethnic element, and leave nothing but a blank 
on the face of Christendom, save the fiat of the scep- 
ter of St. Peter. This silent and almost impercepti- 
ble killing out of the Spirit, in course of time, hum- 
bled a noble nation into the stupor of a wild despair. 
There were a thousand years wherein Romanism 
held universal empire over the religious thought of 
Europe. And the whole realm of history gives no 
utterance to a more fearful despotism, or to more 
flagrant violations to the religious rights of man. 

For this condition of things the hierarchy is not 
responsible altogether, because other influences were 
at work than those immediately religious; but it 
is responsible for the dying away of Roman civili- 
zation, and for the corruption which disabled the 
Italian kings from resisting successfully the rude and 
barbarous Northmen ; responsible, because it has 
courted darkness and ignorance in the control of the 
masses, since it first courted favor of the Saxon 
kings ; responsible, because the doctrinal errors of 
monasticism have been politic tools in the hands of 
the mitered priest, and the gloomy monk in his cell, 
to cut away every vestige of truth, untrammeled by 
tradition, from the human mind ; responsible, be- 
cause, previously, the doctrines of the confessional 

and absolution had begun to hold the papal world 

12 



138 Romanism. 

in a tyranny so great as to weigh human destiny in 
its uneven balance. In its claims to absolute empire 
over the individual mind, it has been the persecutor 
of free thought. It has always shown itself restless 
under any other condition of things than that of irre- 
sponsible individual servitude. 

Jesuitism has always labored for the destruction 
of personal freedom. Here is an excerpt from its 
Constitution : ' ' Let each man firmly believe that 
those who live under obedience ought to suffer them- 
selves to be guided by divine providence, working 
through their superiors, exactly as though they were 
a corpse, which suffers itself to be turned about in 
any direction, and treated in any manner you please ; 
or like the staff of an aged man, which serves 
every-where and in all things him who holds it in 
his hand/' 

In the entire ritualism and working of the Roman 
Church, there is but little regard paid to the inherent 
freedom of the human mind. There is an utter dis- 
regard of any personal wish or thought. Rome, at 
the present time, wields a practical moral coercive 
power more perfect than is the exercise of any civil 
rule on the face of the globe. Such a sway of moral 
forces as was manifested in the silent submission to 
the decretals of the last Vatican Council can only 
be gained in the untiring work of centuries. Uncon- 
ditional submission to ecclesiastical authority has 
become a matter of habitual belief. Right or wrong, 
no other calculation is ever made. The destiny of 
the damned is the only alternative. Here lies a 
potency, ineradicable, even in the face of the most 



Man's Personal Rights. 139 

intelligent and serious thinking. Obedience to the 
voice of the Church is the supremacy of all virtue; 
and the glory of every adherent is to be a subject. 
The wonder is, that the Romish Church can occupy 
professedly the same ground with its whole history, 
when that history reveals it to be the implacable 
enemy of human liberty, and yet find sympathy from 
any thing that adds life and vitality to modern civ- 
ilization. A Church which relegates to itself the 
innate and personal rights of man's being, which will 
not permit the individual mind freely to reason or 
reflect, whose genius is yet one with the old Egyp- 
tian and Babylonian monarchies, may be suited to 
some regions, may serve some purposes in the first 
steps of human progress, but it is certainly in the 
plainest antagonism with the spirit of this age, with 
its tendencies toward the highest individual devel- 
opment. 

As vital religion has intensified modern civiliza- 
tion a hundred-fold, so Protestant Christianity has 
magnified the individual life, in so far that we can 
now take the street waif, and make of it a great 
character. The chief item of European history since 
this spirit was born, has been a revulsion and a 
struggle for deliverance from ecclesiastical thralldom. 
It needed no prophet's ken to tell that Romanism 
was becoming more and more the enemy of all free 
institutions. Every enlightened nation on the face 
of the globe has been made to feel that, sooner or 
later, it would have hard work with Popery. 

The signs, at present, are more hopeful in Euro- 
pean countries. Germany, already, has virtually 



140 Romanism. 

achieved a victory. Italy is politically free. Under 
the very eyes of the Pope, the old foundations are 
sliding away. Garibaldi is declaring that there is no 
place on earth where the Pope is so little regarded 
as in Rome. Popery is dwindling in all transalpine 
countries. The government of Switzerland shows it 
no forbearance. In Spain, the old concordat has 
been repudiated, and the alternate permission and 
denial of Protestant worship and schools, is evidence 
that opinion is slowly changing. It has a forlorn 
civil recognition in France. Other states of the Con- 
tinent, not already free, are uneasy. The vigor of 
Romanism in Europe, now, is only local. The great 
center of former activities is giving way. The old 
seat of empire is trembling to fall. The last bold 
attempt to brace and strengthen it is not only a sin, 
but a blunder. It set the current in the wrong direc- 
tion. It threw the white horse of the Apocalypse 
back on his haunches. 

In the sufferings of self-defeat, she has turned her 
eyes westward, and caught the glimpse of a magnifi- 
cent prey. For the broken scepter to be repaired, 
it is no hardship to wait a thousand years. The 
vulture, from his aerie, looks quietly down on the 
lamb in the fold, saying, "In my thirst for blood, 
you are the victim." Poor lamb ! No, no! Under 
the leering eyes of that vulture, the lamb has mar- 
velously grown into a lion. 

Romanism and the Common- schools. — A very re- 
mote and philosophic purpose lies hidden in the 
universal desire to educate its children in the privacy 



Our Common-School System. 141 

of its own walls. The controllers of Roman Cath- 
olic policy are shrewd in the knowledge that, side by- 
side with the most thorough intellectual drill, the 
human mind may be given almost any definite relig- 
ious bias ; especially when the work is begun in 
childhood. The highest philosophical attainments, 
ordinarily, are not likely to overthrow preoccupied 
and fixed religious notions. Religious faith and lit- 
erary culture are apt to be harmonized in the matured 
mind, when they are both acquired at the same time, 
and are accepted as harmonies from the same source. 
On this basis, principles may be perpetuated in the 
plainest contrast with modern enlightenment. In 
this way, human thought may be controlled when 
the present generation has passed away. 

Rome seeks its devotees in the cradle, and from 
thence begins the work of moral deformity. A plan 
which proposes to hold up the scepter of moral 
forces by the ingraining of dogma on the plastic 
mind of childhood is far-reaching; and, without 
providential hinderances, is very sure in its conse- 
quences. It can be relied on! Hence the relentless 
opposition to our common-school system, where a 
broad and liberal culture is given, where the mind is 
simply ^developed and made strong, so that in both 
secular and religious affairs it may act and decide 
intelligently and wisely. Let the genius of our 
common-school system become as sacred as the flag 
of our liberties and the constitution of our country. 
Let it be defended and protected as the dearest 
heritage of our patriotism. 



142 Romanism. 

Romanism and Progressive Christian Thought. — 
The claims of the Papal Church in the last quarter 
of a century, ought to put to shame the proposition 
that it is not at war with modern thought. During 
that time it has — 

1. Denied the liberty of the press and of speech. 

2. It has relegated to itself the privilege to decide 
on the relative rights and provinces of Church and 
state. It has maintained that, in every conflict be- 
tween the civil and the ecclesiastical, the ecclesiastical 
should prevail; that spiritual ends may be advanced 
by civil agencies ; that force may be employed to 
carry out any plan of the Church. There is as much 
opposition from Roman authorities, to American 
notions of this question, as there is to skeptical 
science and infidelity. Rome recognizes no civil 
allegiance. It is repeatedly, and in different coun- 
tries, still making daring inroads on the civil sphere, 
and in some cases without the shadow of permanent 
or even temporary benefit. All this appears to be 
in plain contrast with the religious and political free- 
dom of the times. 

3. The Romish Church has never relinquished its 
notions about the persecution and coercion of schis- 
matics. The spirit of the old doctrine, — for the sake 
of uniformity heresy must be quenched, if even by 
blood, — is still alive. 

4. Rome always has been, and is to-day, the 
advocate of a centralization dangerous alike to both 
Church and state. 

5. It has implanted in the minds of its youth 



Rome Fears Liberty. 143 

servile doctrines respecting the sovereignty of a for- 
eign spiritual potentate. 

6. It offers in place of the free-flowing and buoy- 
ant life of the present, a ghostly asceticism which 
finds for itself a home under the cowl and in the 
cloister. The history of the last fifty years has 
brought about the conviction that personal godliness 
may. feel perfectly at home in all the legitimate man- 
ifestations of human life. All the normal activities 
of man's being may be naturally adjusted to the 
largest and richest Christian experiences. He may 
partake of the labors and drink deep of the pleasures 
of life without being contaminated with the world's 
alloy. There is no necessity for a divorce of things 
secular and sacred. 

7. From the independent development of secular 
affairs which has so extensively prevailed in both 
Europe and America in the last hundred years, 
Romanism has simply withdrawn itself to stand back 
on its ancient prerogatives, manifesting very clearly 
a conscious dread of all progression, except where it 
is placed under the surveillance of churchly official- 
ism. Popery fears liberty or any individual move; 
and its aim is to crush every independent force whose 
tendency is to let in the universal light of truth. The 
private activities which have been awakened by com- 
mercial enterprise and other influences in the last 
three centuries have given Romanism great anxieties 
and much trouble with some of its populations. The 
light of the new illumination under which the world 
is now moving has made it envious and hesitating 
to gather its forces for a life and death struggle. 



144 Romanism. 

If the right of life, the right of freedom, and popu- 
lar government, three principles which underlie mod- 
ern civilization, shall stand secure, I do not see how 
Romanism can stand unless it shifts its tactics. If 
the genius of our institutions is to live, it will finally 
put an end to all dictatorship, and to all influences 
which propose to sway the religious destiny of the 
race by other than legitimate agencies. The owl and 
the night-hawk may enjoy the twilight, but they must 
hide themselves from the noonday splendors. The 
masses of our people are no longer the grub of papal 
darkness. In the face of the fact, the death of the 
hierarchy seems imminent. As long as belief in the 
Immaculate Conception is entertained, as long as a 
market can be found for silly tales and miracles, the 
scepter of St. Peter can be kept from falling. These 
dangerous methods, however, are sure to lose their 
efficiency in the presence of a free press and a free 
pulpit. The later plans of the papal authorities are 
nearly all political, and its methods are from policy. 
The proclamation of the infallibility dogma was a 
movement of desperation. It was an attempt to cork 
and keep above the waves a sinking ship. The old 
structure, with its freightage of souls, is yet afloat; 
but it is not safe, it needs a new bottom. 

The present attitude of the Roman Church has an 
immediate connection with the world's future welfare, 
and the coming issues of Christianity. Such a con- 
nection, too, as well might awaken some public alarm. 
If Papal authority should ever gain a supremacy in 
the earth, it is very clear that Christian civilization, 
as it is ordinarily understood, would perish forever. 



Rome's Learning. 145 

The Hierarchy is condemned in its history. When 
this seductive and magnificent scheme is viewed in 
the passionless logic of events, when we see it as it 
has passed through the slow and solemn ordeal of 
centuries, we know that its claims are unreal, that 
its promises have never been fulfilled. It has failed 
in its boasted training of the masses. Instead of 
educating, it crushes the faculties. Its fruit among 
the nations has been anarchy and the most galling 
despotism. 

We do not charge Rome with illiteracy. Her 
priesthood is intelligent, shrewd, and learned. Only 
the hordes below it are ignorant and blindly serv- 
ile. Her privileged classes are cultured in all the 
arts of eloquence and rhetoric. They have explored 
the avenues of wisdom and discovered her richest 
treasures. Grant the first principles of their system, 
and they lie intrenched behind an invulnerable logic. 
As a class, they are men of matchless diplomacy. 
They are able to touch the springs of human action. 
They are able to look in on the human heart, and 
read its divinest throbbings, and offer a lure for all its 
desires. They can attract the wise and woo the cred- 
ulous. They are pre-eminently fitted to sway a peo- 
ple w r ho have been born and nurtured under their 
politic instructions. Not only this, but they are able 
to bring to bear on the yielding social life of Amer- 
ica a great many skilled, practical appliances. In 
this hot and hurried life of ours, in this ambition of 
lust and greed, in this rush and glare of pleasure, in 
all the anxieties of trade, they have a specious balm 
for every wound. 

13 



146 Romanism. 

Romish Claims to Unity. — Romanism has always 
claimed to be at peace with itself. Is this true? The 
history of the Vatican Council reveals the fact that 
this boasted unity exists only in opinion and name. 
The notable quiet within its borders finds an expla- 
nation either in a dread of Papal fulminations or in a 
sacrifice of personal principle and the dearest rights 
of independent thinking. Through the whole session 
of the council there was a strong minority opposed 
to the infallibility dogma. From this minority came 
a petition against it, signed by many of the strongest 
names of the Church. Among them was the present 
Archbishop of Baltimore; Kenrick, of St. Louis; 
Purcell, of Cincinnati ; and the present Cardinal of the 
United States. The silent submission of such minds 
has given the Church uniformity. They have united 
in an error, and by their agreement have made it 
lasting. That which these men did not believe, in 
the honesty of their own convictions, has become a 
damnable heresy to disbelieve. They now give recog- 
nition and countenance to this error as it goes out 
with its eternal consequences. They are now the 
avowed and sworn advocates of a doctrine which, 
before it was lobbied through the assembly, they 
believed to be spurious. 

Romish unity only appears in the shape of a vast 
and lifeless uniformity. To enjoy the spirit of unity in 
its borders, it will be required to pass through nearly 
the same phases of history through which Protestant- 
ism has passed in the last three hundred years. And 
yet there is so little hope of reformation in a Church 
whose head claims to be the infallible vicegerent of the 



Rome's Relation to Unbelief. 147 

Almighty, himself. A close study and application of 
the history of the Reformation would doubtless help 
purify Romanism, and lead it toward the evangelical 
ideal, toward a unity which must come of necessity 
from a higher type of Christian character. Providence 
has built light-houses on the hidden rocks of Latin 
Church history for Protestant Christianity ; so in its 
turn it might give back advantageous impulses ; for, 
with all its rivalries and sectarian bitterness, it is 
much nearer the conception of the Savior's prayer 
for unity. 

Romanism and Modern Unbelief. — The hierarchy 
arrogates to itself a prime hatred for skeptical 
thought. Its fulminations have been hurled against 
the unnatural forces of religious history, with a zeal 
worthy a power which had not been goading them to 
their present position and influence by its own dark 
history. There is nothing more patent to the ob- 
server of events than the antithesis to Christian 
thought, which consists, greatly, in a spirit of revul- 
sion against the errors and superstitions, either be- 
longing or immediately related to the Church in its 
darker days. A good definition of German Ration- 
alism would be, A supra-radical revolt of the under- 
standing against the unwarranted supernaturalism of 
mediaeval Church history. German education pro- 
voked a spirit of inquiry, and called out the broadest 
and freest observation. As soon as her brilliant 
minds began to look back from the vantage-ground 
of centuries, from the rise of monasticism, Romanism 
appeared to them like a vast and masterful infatuation ! 



148 Romanism. 

and, from Luther's time down, it was soon regarded 
as little else than a splendid and imposing fallacy. 
Behind a great drama of human folly, they were 
unable to see a life which should not be strange to 
any of us. 

It is very easy for men with natural inclinations 
against the strictures of a holy life to look on this 
picture, with its sad consequences, and then turn 
away from all the rightful obligations imposed by the 
Christian system. If the Reformation had not thrown 
a brilliant and splendid light in the face of these re- 
pudiators of Church history, they would deserve no 
great rebuke. They might be called the intellectual 
troubadours of the modern age. The close attach- 
ment which vital Christianity held to Roman Cathol- 
icism in feudal times has been adverse to its claims 
on all who have not been able to distinguish between 
the true Church of Christ and its monstrous corrup- 
tions. If the Papacy had repudiated any of its black 
and shameful history, Christian apology, in the face 
of unbelief, might appear with more convincing argu- 
ment. That it has not done this may be abundantly 
shown. 

In the fourth chapter of Decrees may be found 
the following: 

"Neque enim fidei doctrina, quam Deus revelavit, 
velut philosophicum inventum proposita est humanis 
ingeniis proficienda, sed tanquam divinum depositum 
Christi Sponsse tradita, fideliter custodienda et infal- 
libiliter declaranda. Hinc sacrorum quoque dogma- 
turn is sensus perpetuo est retinendus, quern semel 
declaravit sancta mater Ecclesia, nee unquam ab eo 



Dogmatic Decrees. 149 

sensu, altioris intelligentiae specie et nomine, rece- 
dendum. Crescat igitur et multum vehementerque 
proficiat, tarn singulorum, quam omnium, tarn unius 
hominis, quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatem ac sseculorum 
gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia; sed in suo 
dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem 
sensu, eademque sententia. " 

4 'For the doctrine of faith which God hath re- 
vealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical 
invention, to be perfected by human ingenuity, but 
has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse 
of Christ, to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. 
Hence, also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is 
perpetually to be retained which our holy mother, 
the Church, has once declared; nor is that meaning 
ever to be departed from, under the pretense or pre- 
text of a deeper comprehension of them. Let, 
then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each 
and all, of individuals and of the whole Church, in 
all ages and all times, increase and flourish in abun- 
dance and vigor ; but simply in its own proper kind, 
that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one and 
the same sense, one and the same judgment." 

This commits Rome to her whole history, and is 
offered in confirmation of her most perverse and rad- 
ically erroneous Scripture interpretations, * such as 
would knock the underpinning from all science. 

In the same decree, with a show of. tolerance in 
the free use of scientific facts and principles, it is 
understood that the Church is to hold over them the 
infallible "thus far, and no farther." "Sed justam 
hanc libertatem agnoscens, id sedulo caveat, ne divinae 



150 Romanism. 

doctrinae repugnando errores in se suscipiant, aut 
fines proprios transgressae, ea, quae sunt fidei, occu- 
pent et purburbent;" "but, while recognizing this 
just liberty, it stands watchfully on guard, lest sci- 
ences, setting themselves against the divine teaching, 
or transgressing their own limits, should invade and 
disturb the domain of faith." If facts conflict with 
Church tradition, so much the worse for the facts. 
Conclusions of science, which present any antagonism 
to this tradition, are not offered the respect of even 
a reasonable refutation, but are unconditionally con- 
demned without investigation. 

This position in the Papal Church caused the 
first break between religion and science. The friend- 
ship was broken as soon as scientific research had 
enough self-respect to repel Rome's infallible dictum. 

The very status of Romanism to-day involves 
skepticism. As a matter of faith, the masses of the 
Church have no personal knowledge of the Bible. 
As a matter of faith, the teachings of the priesthood 
are accepted without question. There is no doctrine 
held by the laity of that Church that is not held with 
the understanding that it is to be believed simply 
because the Pope gives it his sanction. 

The common tide of Papal thought is simply 
passive, like the waters of a great river. The teach- 
ings of this monarch Church are not given because 
of any inherent evidences of their truth, or because 
there is an indubitable basis of resting either in 
nature or revelation, for the mind of the receiver, 
but simply through the will of the Pope. It takes 
away all interest in the fact that truth may be known 



Political Designs. 151 

in the common mind because of itself. If there be 
such a thing as universal skepticism, this opens the 
door-way. Thousands of restless and powerful spirits 
of the present time consider themselves simply eman- 
cipated from a great negation when they have repu- 
diated the obligations of Romanism; and from this 
step there is an easy descent to the abrogation of all 
bonds, whether of sympathy or thought, with the 
Christian system. The priest a juggler, and his pro- 
fessed religion a fable, are stepping-stones to infidelity 
already worn by the passing of thousands of sad souls 
in search of truth. The condition of European soci- 
ety is proof of this fact. Take out the Protestant 
element, wherein a living faith mostly rests on a per- 
sonal examination of the Word, and two classes will 
comprise nearly the entire population: the adherents 
of Rome and intelligent rationalistic infidels. 

Political Ambitions — The guardians of American 
liberty have due cause to keep a vigilant eye on the 
powerful presence of Romanism. The Pope is yet 
demanding the right to determine for himself the 
sphere and province of his own activities; and the 
whole Roman world, by the Vatican Council, has 
been irrevocably pledged to support his decisions. 
Suppose there be no present fears of this claim ; sup- 
pose it is never granted under present surroundings. 
It can yet be made the basis of the remotest political 
purposes. There is evidently great hope in the Papal 
Church of supremacy by secular diplomacy. Every 
movement of the secret controllers of Roman Catholic 
policy in the last twenty-five years has only set in 



152 Romanism. 

letters of clearer light the hopes of re-establishing, if 
even by physical force, the terrestrial scepter of St. 
Peter. Their vain struggle with Germany, and their 
stubborn yielding to all the States of Europe which 
have attempted the assertion of any independent 
civil rights, are intimations that they intend to cling 
to the old thread-bare dogma of civil subordination 
to the ecclesiastical. Else why contend in all these 
desperate cases of later history. There is certainly 
no hope of success for the present. 

And yet this arrogance implies a conscious power. 
The Papal authorities seem to be acting on the plan 
that, if they should fail to gain their ends in a thou- 
sand successive struggles, they intend to persevere in 
the same vindictive assertion of rights, and in the 
same stern contention for a necessary doctrine. Then, 
if ever the way opens out, if ever the road to civil do- 
minion becomes barely passable, the greatest author- 
ity which may be assumed at such a time will be 
entirely consistent with their history, and they can, 
then, with a show of reason, maintain that the world 
ought not complain. Rome's present status and be- 
lief has prepared the world to accept the utmost 
limits of its claims without astonishment, if it is ever 
able to execute them. It is waiting, now, Micawber- 
like, for new developments to bring their advantages, 
for the civil and social changes of history to open out 
ways and opportunities. It is, evidently, now aiming 
at every balance of power, wedging into every breach, 
patiently waiting with almost unbounded faith in the 
future. The reconquering of Germany, the capture 
of America, the reclaiming of Greek Christianity, the 



A Fearful Problem. 153 

planting of the cross over the crescent of Mohammed, 
the scepter of St. Peter over China, the submission 
of South America, the downfall of all institutions 
which are in any way opposing forces. Aye ! in this 
faith is the full hiding of its power. 

While making use of outward circumstances as 
they appear, one after another, it is marshaling its 
hosts, closing- up its ranks, preparing for an emer- 
gency, though it knows not what that emergency will 
be; having in remembrance that the heritage of pow T er 
which it gathered to itself out of the womb of the 
dark ages it is yet able to wield with almost a moral 
omnipotence. This is more significant in connection 
with the last bold act to deepen and drive home the 
doctrine of unconditional submission to the will of 
the Pope. It brings into view the possibilities of a 
most fearful spiritual despotism. It is the measure 
of a political force ready to be exerted at the oppor- 
tune time to gratify an ambition as insatiable as the 
grave. What else can it signify ? A problem is here 
presented to American statesmanship, fraught at once 
with great interest and great danger; for, as sure as 
the sun shines, the open policy of Romanism is in 
direct antagonism with American institutions and 
American Church-life. It has never permitted liberty 
to live for an hour where it could destroy it. It has 
taken the side of despotism in all the revolutions of 
Europe. The spirit of carnage, of anarchy and old 
night, still hangs to its garments as when it shed the 
blood of the reformative fathers. 

The spiritual potencies of Romanism in civilized 
Europe and America can never hope, by honest 



154 Romanism. 

evangelism, to become comparatively more powerful 
than at present. The irreligious element of the popu- 
lation of the United States, particularly, is greatly 
under the evangelical agencies of Protestantism. The 
Papacy evinces no great concern about its spiritual 
power lately. It has stepped down from a domain 
of enduring power, and has become involved in poli- 
tical strife, and brought upon itself the ill will of 
nearly all civil governments. The priesthood has cast 
the ultimatum of Papal supremacy in the uncertain 
scale of human prowess. Our danger is not in its 
religious teachings, but in the fact that these teach- 
ings are made the stepping-stones of secular aggran- 
dizement. 

One of the bishops, lately writing to the Pope, 
says: "Within twenty years this Protestant heresy 
will come to an end. If we can secure the West and 
the South, we can take care of New England. All 
that is needed is money and priests to subjugate the 
mock liberties of America. " The West! That means 
the valley of the Mississippi. The region of country 
from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and 
from the lake States almost to the gulf. The world's 
garden, containing greater resources of wealth and 
power than any other equal territory on earth. In- 
habited by a people who are inspired with the her- 
aldry of the plowshare, who love free thought and 
liberty better than they love their lives, who only 
need to become alive to the policies of a foe to put 
an end to its designs forever. 

The South! Many priests, with resources, have 
gone to take possession of the black race. If Rome 



Church and State. 155 

succeeds in her Southern policy, if the coveted prize 
is ever gained, she will sway the destinies of this na- 
tion. God pity us, and save us from our lethargy, 
if we ever let this thing come to pass. Though a 
remote and needless possibility, it will surely be fol- 
lowed , by the downfall of our civilization, by the 
burial of all freedom and all intelligence. We shall 
be ruled by a religious absolutism powerless to save, 
but mighty to drag us to the deepest degradation, 
to the skepticism of despair. We shall find a Church 
recognizing no relation to the state but that of sub- 
jection on the part of the latter. A government 
under ecclesiastical control is powerless to remold 
life and society. The secular arm was never inter- 
posed for spiritual support without being enervated, 
and without degrading Christianity in the eyes of the 
reasonable world. Rome has never committed her- 
self to any legitimate channel of Christian labor, has 
never agreed to keep her hands off the helm of state. 

An excerpt from the Catholic World, of 1870, 
shows plainly her theory of government : ' ' The 
Church does not and can not in any degree favor 
liberty, in the Protestant sense of liberty. 
While the state has rights, she has them only in 
virtue and by permission of the superior authority, 
and that authority can only be represented through 
the Church." 

Now, then, let us be reasonable in our hopes and 
our fears; neither idle in our self-confidence, nor 
frightened over sporadic and abnormal phenomena 
which do not affect the great laws of opinion and 
progress. Romanism is likely to be defeated in its 



156 Romanism. 

most insidious and matured plans. An imperial race 
of freemen is organizing its intellect and religious 
thought, and concentrating it in public life. 

There are, now, a great many evidences of sta- 
bility. We are fast approaching a great brotherhood 
of interests, which is precipitating upon the Churches 
the arduous work of unifying this great people, and 
of keeping the altar-fires of pure and undefiled relig- 
ion burning, like vigils, until the night is over. 

At the same time, let us keep our eyes open 
enough to see that a want of diligence in the Prot- 
estant world will bring disaster and defeat. In these 
times, it is not safe for Protestantism to trust to the 
impetus it has gained, or to its recuperative force. 
It is not safe to smile down or browbeat a threaten- 
ing evil; but rather, in Christian love, to struggle 
against it with heart and hand; exaggerating no evil, 
preaching no despair, showing no ill-will, proclaiming 
no persecution. Keeping on the safe side, rather, 
becoming wise as serpents. 



Chapter VL 

THE UNSOLVED RELIGIOUS PROBLEM. 

CHRISTIANITY has been allied to the civil 
authority almost from its inception. The organic 
connection of the civil and the religious, with a few 
exceptions, has been the invariable rule since the 
third century. This state of things found its origin, 
doubtless, in the old Jewish Theocracy. If, in the 
only government over which the Almighty exercised 
immediate and personal supervision, the civil and 
the ecclesiastical codes were not only combined, but 
made one for a final purpose, why should not the 
nearest approximate to this caste of government be 
most pleasing to God, and bring with it the greatest 
wealth of human happiness. 

This view is very plausible until a few distinctions 
are made : 

1. The Hebrew government, as an institution, was 
not in the natural order of events. 

2. It was not established for an ordinary purpose 
and object. 

3. The Jewish economy was a special interposi- 
sition, intended to bring about such of the divine 
plans as would probably fail if left to the operation 
of free and contingent causes. 

i57 



158 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

4. The fundamental principle of the Jewish con- 
stitution was purity of worship ; and only because 
Jehovah was King, and in no danger of error, was it 
guarded by penal statutes, 

5. It was a divinely organized and divinely pros- 
ecuted code; and has never been offered in the 
revealed Word as the type or ideal of government 
having ordinary ends in view. The Christian world 
is in no way bound by its forms and its penal and 
ecclesiastical relations. 

Since the Christian era, there have been three 
distinct phases in the history of the relations of 
Church and state, in which the mind of the world 
has been alternating. It is well known that there 
was no organic connection in the apostolic age. For 
nearly three hundred years state authority was the 
implacable opposer of the growth of Christian prin- 
ciples. There was a predisposition against religion, 
strong enough to invoke the subduing force of em- 
pires. The early disciples had no authority but that 
of the lowly Nazarene, no civil power to protect, not 
even civil justice to shield them. The Church came 
down from heaven a stranger, with both opinion and 
authority against it. That grand commission, " Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
creature," had certainly been of no avail unless he 
had taught them the primary lesson, "The kingdom 
of God is within you." You are poor and unlearned 
and powerless, but the germ of a divine conquest is 
among you. Rome will not relax its persecutions. 
The wedded influences of idolatry and state authority 
will struggle against you until they are converted. 



Growth of Romish Doctrines. 159 

This impalpable force with which I have endowed 
you, and all whom I shall commission to preach, 
will sooner or later awe the world into the courtesy 
of a recognition. The success of the CJmrcJi in the 
first ages was due to the devout lives of the early 
Christians. Godliness, deep seated in the heart of 
every follower, gave the Church its triumph. It 
ushered in what is known as the great age of evan- 
gelical Christianity, which lived and gained a victory 
because of a great conviction of its truth, and of its 
ability as an agency to mitigate and destroy the woes 
of humanity. 

In course of time the Church saw darker days. 
Human ambition transformed a successful and com- 
paratively pure Church into the perversions and 
falsehoods of a religious oligarchy. Sagacious and 
unscrupulous men placed themselves in high ecclesi- 
astical authority. Then it began to be. claimed for 
the infallible keys of St. Peter, that they might un- 
lock, for the kingdoms, the blessings they had sought 
in vain for ages, By the slow magic of deception, 
bishops were at last transmuted into the vicegerents 
of God, and all things were declared subject to their 
imperial diction. Local statutes, state laws, petty 
kingdoms, empires, — all were made obedient serv- 
ants of the Church in her plans and purposes. This 
is the second phase which the relation of Church 
and state took upon itself in history, an idea which 
swayed the whole Christian world for a thousand 
years. So deep a hold did it find in human opinion 
that Rome, as late as 1852, felt safe in placing the 
following in the infallible syllabus of errors: "Ecclesia 



160 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

a statu, statusque ab Ecclesia sejungendus est;" "the 
Church should be separated from the state, and the 
state from the Church." 

To the Romish notion of the ecclesiastico-political 
problem may be charged much of the corruption of 
the ancient Church, and the final weakness of the 
Latin people, and the superstition and savage life 
which followed, crushing out all existing civilizations. 
It must answer, also, for that indifference which 
allowed the rites of paganism to be transferred to 
Christianity, which allowed the Bible to be hid from 
the commonalty, which placed the gloomy monk in 
his cell, rather than the zealous evangelist among 
the people. 

The hand of God was reaching out of heaven to 
help the nations, when Luther took that old Bible 
which was chained to his cloister wall, and taught its 
contents to the people. From the valleys of Pied- 
mont came an answering shout. The dayspring 
from on high was heralded abroad, and it came, 
welcome as the sun upon a Greenland night. A 
reinvigorated life spread like flame in dry stubble. 
The slumbering religious fires of four hundred years 
were rekindled in the blowing of a heavenly atmos- 
phere, and Christianity was about to be enrobed in a 
vesture of gold. 

In the beginning of the Reformation, the rights 
of individual conscience were presented in strong 
opposition to the hierarchy. Individual right was 
magnified in all the tendencies of reformative thought. 
This could not help but powerfully aim at the over- 
throw of the ancient order of things, which never 



A New Order of Things. 161 

took the individual man into question. An entire 
disregard of personal right was the supremacy from 
which the old spirit overshadowed and dwarfed soci- 
ety. Luther's work was a private enterprise, and 
the occasion from which the evangelical spirit of 
religion gave promise of clear sailing by drifting be- 
yond all breakers. But after the new movement had 
gone on for a time, apparently free from all extrane- 
ous forces, impressing its own inherent life on soci- 
ety ; after Luther had accomplished his w 7 ork and 
gone to the grave, — so severe was the struggle with 
Popery, it seemed almost a necessity that Protestant 
princes should take the Reformed Churches under 
the protection of the state for security. Thus, in 
the readjustment and resettling of opinion, the 
organic relation of Church and state still remained; 
yet it assumed a new form. As an outgrowth of 
the Reformation, civil government was recognized as 
the patroness of religion. One great duty of the 
state was supposed to be the protection and advance- 
ment of the Church. To take all religious interests 
under its special control, to foster and provide for 
the maintenance of the Church by special legislation, 
was supposed to be the ideal of state loyalty to God. 
A transfer of allegiance was made from the Pope to 
the king. This theory, at present, is practically car- 
ried out over nearly all Protestant Europe — present- 
ing the third phase which the question of Church 
and state has taken upon itself. 

In America we have returned to the primitive 
order of things. Church and state, in this country, 
hold the same relation they did in Paul's time and 

14 



162 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

for two hundred years afterward, the ancient hostility 
of state authority excepted. The Church, having to 
do with spiritual things, has free course in all that 
pertains to the kingdom of heaven; the state, having 
to do with temporal things, as an inherent right, con- 
trols all the functions that properly belong to civil 
government. There is no conflict, no collision, no 
antagonism. The boundaries of the civil and the 
ecclesiastical powers are well defined; and are satis- 
factory, in that we have been strangers to a thousand 
perplexities to which Europe has been exposed in 
the last century. 

In the formative period of American history, the 
transatlantic world was pervaded with the idea that 
to take away the legalized connection between the 
civil and the ecclesiastical powers would be little less 
than blasphemy. Immigrants to this country inher- 
ited mostly these prevailing notions. Consequently, 
they were only ready to perpetuate the same order 
of things on these shores. 

While the Puritans were in search of religious 
freedom, it could not be expected that they should 
be free from all the intolerance and narrowness of 
the age in which they lived. They knew of no other 
way of supporting religion except from the public 
treasury. They had very crude notions of what has 
since been the inspiring ideal of our civilization. 

The Jamestown colony was planted under the 
conviction that the highest function of the English 
government was to propagate the Gospel. A state 
Church, according to the usages of the Church of 
England, was established. The colonists knew nothing 



Effects of the Revolution. 163 

else. Dissenters were obligated to help support the 
establishment. Episcopal clergymen were the only 
authorized ministers. Puritans and Quakers were 
banished under penalty. There was no limit to the 
authority of civil rulers either to foster or advance 
special religious interests. A positive sanction was 
given to the Bible as the revealed Word of God by 
most, if not all, the American colonies. Thus the 
debris of European thought drifted across the Atlantic, 
and threatened to ingrain itself more deeply in colo- 
nial opinion than were the ideas of dependence and 
subjection to the mother country. 

The Revolution, fortunately, accomplished more 
than our independence. It gave freedom from the 
religious agencies of Europe. It produced a strong 
opposition to the English aristocracy, and to all 
methods, religious or civil, which would likely pro- 
duce such a privileged class in this country. It was 
not simply a coincidence that opposition to the 
organic relation of Church and state began with the 
declaration of July. A providential blessing was 
wrought here, second only to our liberties. The 
direction in which the tide of feeling was flowing 
became evident from the time the declaration was 
issued. In the following November, Maryland made 
a declaration of rights, intending to dissolve all civil 
relation with the Church. In December a dissolution 
was effected in Virginia. A separation was effected 
soon after in the Carolinas, and several other colonies 
where the Episcopal Church had been established. 
Forty years afterward, the Episcopalians themselves ■ 
united in a combination to overthrow the Congrega- 



164 ' Unsolved Religious Problem. 

tional State Church of Connecticut. Other States in 
succession adopted the voluntary system, and stepped 
into the line of progress. Massachusetts at last cut 
away the excrescence of state support which had 
been hanging to her garments for so long, and we 
are now in the apostolic succession. 

There have been evils resulting from the policy 
of the United States in religious matters. The evils 
of sectarianism, of extreme division of labor, and such 
as are incident to the starting of new Churches, per- 
haps would not appear under the operation of Euro- 
pean methods. Yet these unavoidable results have 
often been turned to good account. The rivalry of 
sects has had a tendency to keep Christian life pure. 
The struggle of Churches in villages and towns and 
pioneer regions has been favorable to the highest 
development of Christian graces. At least there is 
no desire to return to the state of things in our earlier 
history. As our people become cultured they enjoy* 
more and more the blessings which flow from the 
boundless liberty of American Church-life, and they 
see more clearly the evils either of ecclesiastical su- 
premacy or immediate state support. It is a fact of 
some importance that the attained result has been the 
healthful outgrowth of Christian sentiment. It was 
in no sense an "infidel or a skeptical movement. 
Thomas Jefferson, as an enemy of Christianity, very 
greatly aided the movement in Virginia, but he was 
not the principal force in bringing the work to its 
completion. American religious thought, casting 
itself into political life, silently influencing and con- 
trolling its spirit, has broken its own fetters, and has 



America's Mission. 165 

given itself liberty and self-reliance. It has been the 
mission of America to demonstrate that the highest 
and purest type of religious life is consistent with the 
highest and purest form of individual freedom. The 
demonstration so clear and glorious is having a reflex 
influence in transatlantic countries, and, sooner or 
later, it may work a revolution. Many of the great- 
est minds of Europe are now desiring an overthrow 
of the old unnatural alliance. Germany is beating 
back the romanistic phase, but is not yet settled as 
to what is best. The eyes of the civilized world 
are now watching the politico-ecclesiastical problem 
through which she is passing. The result will be 
important to the world, because with every modifica- 
tion simply of the old order of things new difficulties 
appear, and no adjustment has yet given satisfaction. 

Extreme Views. — A political recognition of the 
Christian religion in this country is of no great impor- 
tance. It may not be advisable that Christianity, as dis- 
tinguished from other systems, should be made the law 
of the land. As good a plan as any is to keep in mind 
the principles upon which we have acted in the past : 

1. There are some things which must obtain in 
every society, which are not proper for the govern- 
ment to handle. 

2. There are things with which the Church, as 
such, can not rightfully have any thing to do ; not only 
because experience has shown the sad consequences 
of every violation, but because Christ has made it so 
in his teachings, ''Give unto Caesar that which is 
Caesar's." 



1 66 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

Now, because there are separate and widely di- 
verging channels of labor for the world's religious and 
political potencies, is there any necessity, or is it 
even possible, to sever all natural connection between 
them? Because it was not designed they should 
both live in the same establishment and under the 
same roof, is no reason why they should not live side 
by side on terms of intimacy and friendship. There 
is a factor of American thought opposed to Sunday 
laws, and chaplaincies in legislative halls and in the 
army, and to the Bible in the public-schools. The 
basis of the opposition is, we have proclaimed relig- 
ious freedom; we have concluded to legislate neither 
for or against or patronize any religious sect or party. 
It is very true that Christianity, as an influence, has 
placed its signet on many of our customs and our 
legal and political proceedings. This state of things 
is to be expected in a country whose thought and 
sentiment is so decidedly Christian. Many deeply 
religious men have occupied high places at the hands 
of the people. The silent potencies of religion in 
political life have lifted some of the brightest lights 
of the Gospel into seats of authority, and very natu- 
rally our laws and public practices would partake of 
the Christian spirit. At the same time, it is almost 
universally conceded that, whatever is taken from 
the Bible and grafted into our civil code, does not 
find its reason or authority in the fact that the Bible 
is the Word of God, but on the basis of its moral 
right and its natural utility to carry forward the pur. 
poses of the social compact. Christian practices which 
find their support from the civil arm, base their right 



Extreme Views. 167 

of existence and enforcement on natural and not re- 
vealed principles. The observance of the Sabbath is 
a requirement of the civil law, because it has been 
found best for man and beast that they should have 
one day of rest in seven. The same day set apart by 
the Christian people of the country is designated by 
statute, I suppose, because it brings about a favor- 
able coincidence, and enables the state to make use 
of the moral influences of the Church to put into 
operation what it considers an economic principle. 

As to chaplaincies, the very spirit of devotion 
entered into in the beginning of a public work, pre- 
supposes a state of mind and heart the most favorable 
and the most eminently adapted to the transaction 
of the important and serious concerns of state. Our 
chaplaincies are justifiable on legal and philosophical 
principles. As to the Bible in the schools, the state 
is under obligation to give that sort of culture and 
training to its children which will produce the best 
citizenship. A man is not apt to make a good citi- 
zen if deprived of moral teaching in childhood. It is 
the duty of the state, as a matter of self-protection, 
not only to banish ignorance, but to teach its children 
those elements of truth and justice, right and wrong, 
to which they are expected to give obedience in 
taking on themselves the responsibilities of citizen- 
ship. Among all text-books for this purpose, the 
Bible has been found to be the best. There is no 
other manual of duty so broad and plain. To object 
to this because the Bible additionally claims to be 
the revealed will of Jehovah, is to carry the argument 
too far. Besides, if the civil power does not choose 



1 68 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

to enforce the truth in the name of its revealed 
authority, the inherent right of the truth itself re- 
mains, with its abundant and overwhelming demands. 
It is unfortunate for a certain class of reasoners that 
any good at all is found in the Bible. Shall we blot 
from the statutes all laws relating to larceny because 
the divine command is, "Thou shalt not steal ?" 
Shall we cease to legislate on the high crime of mur- 
der because there is a command, "Thou shalt not 
kill?" These are primary principles of the law, writ- 
ten in the world's great Spring-time, while our systems 
of jurisprudence were yet lying in the womb of his- 
tory. They controlled men long before the hydra- 
head of infidel stateism was ever lifted. The finest 
legalists of the country tell us that the Roman law 
and the English common law and our statutory laws 
all find a sufficient basis in the system promulgated 
by Moses. Whence all this enmity? Do men sup- 
pose they can live in the blaze of modern civilization 
and yet free themselves from the teachings and the 
influence of the Bible? Its teachings are so inwoven 
with our institutions and our literature that it lays at 
the foundation of every right we possess, and every 
solid pleasure of life. If a man desires to cast him- 
self beyond the majestic sweep of Bible thought, he 
must reach the boundaries of civilization. If a man 
would desire to deprive himself of the blessings which 
the Bible brings him, he would tear down the house 
in which he lives, he would remove from society the 
great natural fountain of its laws, its moral necessities, 
and its religious healings, and would turn the world 
back on its hinges for a thousand years. The Bible 



Intimacy of the Civil and Religious. 169 

is the granite support of American liberty. When 
we have lost our reverence for it we have lost our 
nation. Whoever hates it hates his own soul. 

True Relation. — The growth of Church and state 
in this country has been proportionate each to the 
other. Charges and synods and conferences have 
multiplied, and new States have been added to the 
Union. While each has been attending to its own 
affairs and advancing in its own way, undisturbed by 
the encroachments of the other, there has been such 
a near relationship, such a mutual dependence, that 
every commotion or disturbance of the one has cor- 
respondingly influenced the other. With different 
spheres of operation and duty they have a common 
mission and the same final purpose. The ecclesias- 
tical and civil forces of the United States are comple- 
ments each of the other. It has taken them both to 
make us what we are. From their mutual depend- 
ence has come our prosperity. At the same time, 
men are not affected in their civil relations by their 
religious views. Religion is neither fettered nor en- 
dowed. With all the inducements of false zeal in 
religion, there are none in the direction of asking 
that it shall be upheld or propagated by the civil law 
of the land in the name of its sole practical utility. 
The American Church has undertaken to supply what 
it once seemed to lack by taking the lead in all social 
and humane enterprises, by evincing a deep concern 
for the poor and downtrodden, lifting them up in 
their humanity rather than leaving them to the feeble 

helps and benevolences of the state. It has claimed 

15 



170 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

the respect and veneration of mankind in the private 
and peaceful victories of the cross, and in the full 
proof that it is the world's benefactor. It has 
become the open and avowed enemy of all tyranny, 
all slavery, and all wrong; the shield of liberty, of 
freedom, and the fraternity of man. It has been 
relying on moral and spiritual rather than on secular 
and physical influences. It has shown itself able to 
grapple with the intelligent activities of the age, and 
has made them the conditions of success. It has been 
able to plant almost every element of our prosperity 
deep in the soil of religion. In order to see our social 
corruptions fade from the face of the land, it has 
sought to bring the sovereign people under the power 
of the religion of Christ. It has acted on the prin- 
ciple that, to give a man religion and intelligence, 
the ballot is safe in his hands. Religion, propagated, 
not by might or power or sword or authority, or 
through worldly motives and prospects, or fraud and 
craft, but by the silent and powerful influence of truth 
itself, attested by the Holy Spirit. As it was in the 
time of Christ and the apostles, the spirit-power of 
Christianity, when relied on, has always given it a 
superiority to survive earthly mutations and gain 
victories over sin. . The cause is safe as long as there 
is a reliance placed on the divine side above all that 
is human. Our Lord and Savior never took any part 
in politics. He proclaimed himself distinct from any 
earthly ruler. He repudiates the use of force to ex- 
tend his authority among men. He never made any 
allusion to aid from the state. The Gospel was to 
be preached to all people unconditionally. Neither 



State Authority. 171 

the help nor the consent of civil rulers was taken into 
account, but in the excellence of his life he taught 
the world that the application of his system was 
essential to all that was good or pure or exalted, as 
the result of human energy. Religion can not be 
made compulsory or enforced by all the legal statutes 
under the sun. It is taught as a principle belonging 
to the regions of the mind and heart and conscience, 
and, as such, it was born free, and can not be coerced 
or driven into terms. The policy of Philip with the 
Moriscoes, and Charlemagne with the Saxons, might 
produce extensive nominal results, but it would shake 
a great many facts and overturn the firmest principles. 
The authority of the state is limited strictly to 
temporal affairs. Its work is to afford the same kind 
of liberty to believers and unbelievers without dis- 
tinction. Religious equality of citizenship is the only 
available and practical theory in this country. The 
end and aim of human government is to insure the 
largest degree of liberty attainable by all. If any 
religious sect or party is permitted to become a can- 
didate for state favor, human government is fettered 
in its endeavors. The highest liberty of the citizen 
can be guaranteed without abating one jot or tittle of 
the claim which God has upon a nation, and of its 
responsibility to secure to the individual the utmost 
freedom of conscience in religious affairs. The state 
is not to offer and afford toleration simply, but relig- 
ious freedom. It is the business of the state to pro- 
tect every man in the measure of knowledge and 
conviction to which he has attained, unless his notions 
should conflict with the universal laws of morality. 



172 Unsolved Religious Problem. 

External means, however, used to overthrow a spir- 
itual power, have always shown themselves signally 
impotent; and it is better, generally, to depend on 
religious truth to break down religious falsehood. 
This policy is that of the government toward Mor- 
monism, and it is likely to be effectual. The Gospel 
has found its highest triumph where investigation has 
been unfettered, where thought has been free, and 
where it has been permitted to depend on its own 
divinely invested resources for success. Christianity, 
in fact, lays the only true foundation for the highest 
freedom. It advocates the brotherhood of man and 
an equality of rights. It develops the highest type 
of manhood. It ministers to the wants of the poor 
and the distressed. It checks the ravages of ambition 
by endowing the soul with the holiest motives. It 
never despairs of lifting the great masses of earth from 
the degradation into which they have fallen. The 
religion of the Gospel is in perfect accord with what- 
ever elevates or purifies or ennobles, and its sublimest 
examples are to be found among the freest, most 
civilized, and enlightened people of the globe. 



Chapter VII. 

TEMPERANCE. 

AS the organic Church of Christ is intimately 
related to the morals of a people, wherever its 
work has free course, it becomes, in a great measure, 
responsible for the condition of society. The world 
has come to regard the Church as a kind of physician, 
invested with radical cures for the most enormous 
social evils, and expects that it will at all times 
throw its whole influence on the side of its own in- 
spired teachings. Any plain question of right or 
wrong involves its members in a responsibility to 
accept and defend the better part. The ideal Church 
is equal to all the exigencies of time; but the real 
Church has often found itself powerless before the 
tides of corruption coming up from the sea of human 
life which it has undertaken to control. 

There are always certain evils attending condi- 
tions of culture which statesmen have designated as 
evils of civilization. Monstrous corruptions have 
often followed in the wake of science and art and 
refinement. Intellectual development and material 
progress, while they elevate, they open out facilities 
for crime unknown to an age of barbarism. These 
civilized evils are the most dangerous foes of the 
human family. 

i73 



174 Temperance. 

Then, again, there are inherited vices following a 
race from its first rude beginnings into the highest 
path of its progress, refining with its refinement, and 
settling down like a canker in its life. Intemperance 
is a vice of this kind. It prevailed among our Anglo- 
Saxon forefathers. There was a time when the ale- 
houses among them were almost sacred. The grog- 
gery is now known wherever the race is. The Medes 
took advantage of this propensity more than two 
thousand years ago, and gave them a defeat. From 
the same cause, it is said, William of Normandy 
gained the battle of Hastings. With this fact before 
us, consider how great the reform. It is not the 
part of true piety, however, to grow faint before the 
immensity of the work. The reform has already 
attained to national dimensions. The most serious 
thought of the wise and considerate of the land is 
being laid under tribute. 

What shall be the influence of civil society in 
enforcing temperance principles? How can individual 
rights and the rights of property be secured, and, at 
the same time, sustain moral truth? These questions 
have been answered in the accepted principle that, 
whatever may be the occasional loss to the individual, 
society has a right to protect itself. Another ques- 
tion has superseded these as of prime importance at 
the present time. How shall society conserve its 
influence, and present healthful features in the work 
of moral reform ? The solution of this problem of 
social ethics will demand the research of the maturest 
wisdom. It has bewildered Christian statesmanship. 
It can not be solved like a problem in mathematics 



Policy of the Church. 175 

with a demonstrated result. Hence it is not strange 
that a conflict of opinion should arise here, and 
should give promise of becoming very serious in its 
magnitude. Our whole people, however, are ear- 
nestly deliberating, and we may trust them for a final 
solution. In the mean time, the issue is of great mo- 
ment to every lover of sobriety and virtue. The 
best methods of reform are yet invested with uncer- 
tainty. One thing, however, is certain, ready relief is 
not permanent cure. While it is urgent, if possible, 
to mitigate the immediate woes of intemperance, it 
is not the part of true wisdom to suppose that the 
fountain is thus sealed; it is not the part of true 
faith to be content with such a momentary surcease 
from its sorrows. 

There is only one definite policy for the Church 
of God in this, as in relation to all other social 
evils. Proceed on the assumption that they come 
up from adverse principles deeper than the evils 
themselves ; that they all have an underlying basis in 
a common race degeneracy. This will keep us to 
the old way-marks, and help us to labor under the 
inspiration that the world is to receive an infinite 
purging before it is made pure. There are likely to 
be dangerous issues in every moral reform movement. 
A good many sordid and unscrupulous interests are 
apt to gather around it. It is in danger of being 
estimated as a political force, and of becoming a 
factor in the calculations of the demagogue. Tem- 
perance is purely a moral question. There is no 
doubt concerning it. Universal morality recognizes it 
as right in itself. For any set of men to declare in 



176 Temperance. 

favor of inebriety, would be as radically wrong as to 
declare in favor of theft and murder. Naturally, 
temperance can have no political force except that 
of an influence. There is danger and bad philosophy 
in bringing moral questions into political life in any 
other sense. Until truth is more deeply ingrained in 
society, moral issues (issues in which evidence for 
their right and existence is all on one side) should 
never be hinged on the decisions of the ballot-box. 
The ballot-box is only indirectly philanthropic. It is 
not the immediate source of moral regeneration. It 
is only the reflector, the mouth-piece of opinion. If 
it had any higher authority, there would be less 
danger in leaving to its decisions any question of 
right or wrong. The ballot in the hands of the 
people has given us great glory ; but it is not the 
panacea for all ills. It has its appropriate sphere, 
within which there is no more sacred right given to 
man. A great many things can be accomplished by 
the ballot — not every thing. The Gospel and human 
experience teach the world the truth that society can 
never be raised ab extra, can never legislate itself 
into better morals. The civil law can never reform 
society; it can only protect from the consequences 
of sin. This is its object and aim. It holds in 
check existing evils, until the proper influences can 
be brought to bear for lifting society. Among these 
influences, more than all others, is the religious ton- 
ing of public virtue under the guidance of agencies 
which Christianity alone inspires. The law meets 
present exigencies ; it closes the hatches, keeps down 
the fire — never puts it out. 



Danger of Separate Political Action. 177 

Temperance should enter into the domains of 
statesmanship, just as truth or liberty or justice en- 
ters, and like them should be kept aloof from the 
issues of the political campaign. Sad will be the 
day when a party shall be found to espouse the neg- 
ative, and make it an issue. A temperance party is 
a moral monopolizer. It is about as foreign to the 
political field as a Church members' party would be, 
advocating a legislation to coerce men into its pales. 
If a party should appear having Jesus and the resur- 
rection for its central plank, and enter the lists for 
official honors, men would stand aghast ! Yet it would 
be but the violent phase of what the first is in tend- 
ency. A moral virtue should never be brought into 
favor through the success of partisanship, should 
never be offered for the patronage of men, much 
less their suffrage. To compromise truth in the 
absolute is to send it begging, and rob it of its 
potency. 

The difficulty is not now greatest in the direction 
of the law ; hence the conflict is not first in political 
life. If the core of the fruit is rotten, it is but 
child's play to pick the specks from the outside. 
The harvest of human wishes seldom comes, except 
as the result of adequate toil and sacrifice. Sin can 
never be ultimately repressed by main force. Its 
roots go deeper than the plowshare of human author- 
ity. The law itself becomes corrupt before it reaches 
the source of evil. We can not invent a machine to 
do our work. The mighty task must be wrought 
out through moral and religious influences. The 



178 Temperance. 

burden must be borne by those who are never weary- 
in well-doing. In the elevation of the race there is 
no alchemy by which good, faithful souls can be 
excused from the labor of love and the agony of 
prayer. 

Permanent reforms grow from within outward. 
Society is never lifted momentarily from its thrall- 
dom. The growth of better principles inheres from 
constant and steady relations, which are slow, but 
satisfactory. There is a kind of popular philan- 
thropy abroad, which divests Christianity of specific 
precepts. It comes with its heart full of virtue, 
with the bounds of its affection extended and gen- 
eralized for the common good. It becomes rapturous 
over that definite and glorious object, man in the 
abstract. ■ A beautiful theory ! A polished machine 
of perpetual motion ! The only objection to it is, 
it will not work. A reign of sobriety demands at 
our hands the regal potencies of an individualizing 
labor. God forbid that we should ever turn from it 
to seek the hasty gilding of a momentary political 
victory. 

These late and easy ways of reforming society, 
by the enactment of appropriate laws, are not very 
satisfactory. They mistake effects for causes. The 
wish could only be father to the thought that the 
laws of a country primarily shape its opinions, 
when directly the reverse is true. Generally, legis : 
lation has kept pace with the progress of opinion in 
this country ; and, as long as moral and Christian 
convictions are voiced in the private ballot, the 



The Sovereign Remedy. 179 

same state of things may be relied upon for the 
future. Rather than have principles overturned, 
and facts shaken, we can well forego a fleeting tri- 
umph. Our first and greatest and lasting need is, 
more faith in the power of Christianity to meet 
every exigency in the social life of America. 



Chapter VIII. 

PRIESTHOOD OF THE PEOPLE. 

IN the Jewish Temple worship there was an Outer 
Court, for the Hebrew masses, a Holy Place, 
where the priests only entered to offer the daily sac- 
rifice, and then there was a Holy of Holies, where 
the Ark of the Covenant rested, where the Shekinah 
shone, and where Cherubim kept watch over thje 
Mercy-seat. The veil of entrance to this holy place 
was drawn aside once a year by the high-priest ; and 
then only with the strictest observance, and with 
trembling and awe, lest the dread majesty of Jehovah's 
presence be insulted. The common people were never 
permitted to enter the sacred inclosure. No unau- 
thorized hand ever lifted the veil which hid from the 
common eye the mysteries of the inner sanctuary. 
But when Christ expired on the cross, the veil of the 
Temple was rent in twain — a significant fact ! 

As the coming of Christ put an end to the Jewish 
economy; as he offered himself a sacrifice, once for 
all, for the sins of the world; as he becomes to us, 
in his mediatorial character, a priest and Savior, 
thus requiring at our hands no human mediation,— 
it is not a far-drawn inference that the torn Temple 

veil should be the symbol of a world's free access to 
1 80 



The Doctrine Stated. 181 

a throne of grace. Christ, in his suffering and death 
for the sins of men, besides making atonement for 
sin, abolished the Levitical Order, took upon himself 
the character and duties of high priest, and conferred 
all subordinate work of the priestly office without 
distinction upon the people at large. Hence we un- 
derstand Peter when he says, "Ye, also, as lively 
stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priest- 
hood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God 
by Jesus Christ." And, also, "Ye are a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood." In this connection 
the ascription of St. John the Divine is likewise sig- 
nificant: "Unto him that loved us and washed us 
from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him 
be glory and dominion forever and ever." Every 
man his own priest, the builder of his own confes- 
sional, is a true doctrine, because of the relation of 
Christ to the individual. An intense individualism 
pervaded the apostolic Church. 

Salvation by faith and a priesthood of the people 
were central thoughts in the Reformation. As soon 
as Luther gave them a foothold the shackles of Popery 
fell from an enslaved world. No minister is a priest 
in any distinctive sense. There is no technical priest- 
hood now. The Anglican family of Churches would 
better deserve the name of Protestants if the reforma- 
tion had been more thorough in their borders. A 
ministering people, with Christ for a leader, is the 
world's conquering force. All are called to live and 
to work for God and his Church. In all the primitive 
Churches outside of Syria, forms of Church govern- 



1 82 Priesthood of the People. 

ment were only matters of expediency. They did 
not hold themselves under obligation to the customs 
of Jewish worship. Yet it is well known that every 
pious Jew might teach. In the early Church all 
capable believers might teach. Discipline belonged 
to the people. The sacraments were not a monopoly. 
The right of the laity to baptize was recognized. We 
have St. Ambrose for authority that all taught, all 
baptized. 

But the time came when it was not right for all 
to exercise their rights. As the apostolic Churches 
grew in numbers and in influence, partial delegation 
became necessary to orderly procedure. This partial 
delegation did not renounce the inherent right. In 
the divine economy it is just as necessary that things 
be done decently and in order as that they be done 
at all. It is here as in the social compact. The in- 
dividual foregoes certain rights for the good of soci- 
ety, and in return receives the blessings and protection 
which society secures. Individual rights are held in 
abeyance. In the Church, that which inheres in the 
individual in the majority of cases is surrendered to 
be exercised by the few, in order that the common 
Church may not be torn by dissension or defeated in 
its purposes by a confusion of elements. This is the 
authority by which a holy Church may set apart a 
holy ministry. The Spirit never violates this funda- 
mental fact when He calls his workmen to the walls 
of Zion. The people are not robbed of that with 
which they were divinely invested. They are called 
upon to make a voluntary dedication of authority, or, 
in other words, to make a division of labor in view 



The Doctrine a Living Necessity. 183 

of greater harmony and success. The setting apart 
for a sacred work those whom the Spirit has desig- 
nated is a moral obligation resting on every true 
Church. On the other hand, this recognition of the 
Cliurch ordinarily becomes a part of a true call to the 
ministry. The only exceptions are where the great 
laws of harmony will not be violated. 

The modern error is in endowing the ministry 
with an official sanctity, a kind of supernal sacred- 
ness to which the laity has no right to aspire, when 
there is no inherent ecclesiastical distinction whatever. 
One great and blessed outgrowth of the Reformation 
was the absolute parity of individual membership in 
the Church. This implied the deliverance of the laity 
from the enthralling rule of. the clergy. An unmeas- 
ured advantage would speedily be gained if the broad- 
est possible privileges should be granted to laymen 
in the teaching of the Divine Word. 

The regular ministry can not do the work neces- 
sary to save this land from the flood-tides of immo- 
rality and corruption sweeping over it. It has come 
to pass that every ransomed talent must be brought 
up to its utmost capability. The indwelling of grace 
is not given for a selfish end. The Christian heart is 
not only a depository of sweet influences, but a fount- 
ain of running waters, sending forth a stream of spir- 
itual refreshment. It inheres in man's nature to 
become a positive force in every new relation of life. 
Negative souls never reach the purposes of their 
creation. Unless the positive impulses of our being 
find vent in some form, life is a failure. Personal 
Christian growth depends very greatly on a free and 



184 Priesthood of the People. 

untrammeled exercise of every new-born desire for 
the progress of the kingdom. For the same reason 
that the Church should be aggressive, so should the 
individual Christian. The teachings of political econ- 
omy hold good in the spiritual realm. The policy 
for securing new laborers is in the distribution of 
what we have. The power of the Church might be 
augmented almost infinitely if its private members 
would study their own fitness for an appropriate work. 
The departments of labor may be found as various 
and multiplied as in any field of human activity. 

In the adjusting of specific departments of labor, 
the civil world has learned with greater aptness than 
the religious. Only in the rudest stages of social 
development do men combine in themselves all trades 
and professions. The savage is his own tailor and 
shoemaker, his own carpenter and blacksmith, his 
own lawyer and physician. The first step toward 
development and progress is toward adjusting these 
occupations and pursuits to the individual in society 
rather than confining them all to the solitary faculty 
of a single man. The Church finds a difficulty in 
applying this universal law of labor. If it could be 
brought to its full force a thousand-fold would be 
added to religious energies. It appears that the pri- 
vate membership of the Church is not giving enough 
attention to religious affairs. Many have a name to 
live without being impressed with the personal respon- 
sibilities of a Christian. They have no fixed notions, 
no definite purpose. Their religious lives, with all 
their relations, are simply generalized. They repre- 
sent a desultory, drifting, shiftless sort of Christianity. 



A Layman's Life is Sacerdotal. 185 

A hap-hazzard religious business always leads to 
moral bankruptcy. A great potency for lifting Zion 
from the dust lies wrapped up in our personal inac- 
tivities and neglect of privileges. The divine ideal 
of a perfect priesthood of the people is every man in 
his own place, doing his own work, recognizing the 
perpetual fact that God calls men to preach, and he 
calls them to duty as well. The business of a layman 
is sacerdotal. He is not of the world, but in it, 
bearing wherever he goes a divine commission. He 
is called equally with the highest ecclesiastic to ex- 
emplify in his life, that most sacred of all practical 
truths, "No man liveth to himself." 

16 



Chapter IX. 

AMERICAN MINISTRY. 

A LIVING ministry is God's chosen instrumen- 
tality for the evangelism of the world. Unless 
the divine mind has blundered, the preaching of the 
Gospel by living men will never be superseded by 
any other agency. . The seeds of the Gospel are to 
be planted and nurtured by the Gospel herald. A 
consecrated ministry to save the world is what God 
wanted when he said, "Go . . . preach the Gos- 
pel to every creature." "Go proclaim the glad 
tidings; go shout, like Jonah on the walls of Nineveh. 
Tell to the nations the story of the cross, and leave it 
with them. Go preach, regardless of results, and, 
sooner or later, like the utterances of the babbler on 
Mars' Hill, it will cause the parthenon of sin to trem- 
ble and fall, and bury in its ruins the most brilliant of 
human philosophies. " The foolishness of preaching 
will kill every theory that opposes it. The sneer of 
philosophy at the cry of the Gospel herald is its 
death knell. The voice of a living man before a liv- 
ing people has a potency about it unequaled by the 
force of any other agency. 

Men talk of the press superseding the necessity 

of the preacher only when they are beside themselves. 
1 86 



Tone of the Ministry. 187 

Especially in this country, where we have the might- 
iest ministry known to the world, made so under the 
greatness of an unmeasured responsibility. Heroic 
deeds are the measuring of heroic souls. The Amer- 
ican ministry has kept pace with our great civil 
system, so rife with intelligence and industrial enter- 
prise. Liberty has been our battle-field. Truth has 
found a receptive soil. Conditions have been favor- 
able to the fostering of the purest faith. Under such 
circumstances, preachers of the Word have been 
prompted by the necessity of moral worth, and have 
had opened to them channels through which their 
influence has been felt in all classes of society. The 
uncultured countryman and the man of letters stand 
side by side and bear evidence to the same love. As 
there is a great separation in the advantages of life, 
so there is a great difference in the tone of the min- 
istry by which men are brought to repentance. There 
is a sharp form of thought by which the cultured are 
attracted and led into the paths of peace. Then there 
are direct and obvious arguments; there is a plain 
statement of results commending itself to a sound 
understanding, which attracts and wins great masses 
of our people, where metaphysical and subtle dis- 
tinctions of doctrine are gratuitous offerings, for they 
are never appreciated. Faith in God, manifest in a 
pious life, is about the whole of theology. 

There have been men of talentand learning in the 
Church. There have been utilized to a grand pur- 
pose men without talent, and without learning, as 
well. Both classes may reflect the light of the Spirit. 
Thought and feeling are united in one case, feeling 



1 88 American Ministry. 

and earnestness in the other. The Spirit's testimony 
does not separate between the learned and the un- 
learned, but between the believer and the unbeliever. 
There are no castes in American society. There are 
no aristocracies of rank or station that the masses are 
willing to recognize; yet there are great distinctions 
to be discovered. Our whole people are united by 
general and not so much by personal bonds. There 
is a kind of social friction between the East and the 
West, between the North and the South, between 
the town and the country. In the adaptation of our 
ministry there should be due respect to these class 
feelings. The peaceful homes of the country, and 
the cottages of the poor, should not be sacrificed to 
the whims of high life. The eagle is not fit to lead 
a flock of wild ducks in their migrations through the 
sky. The antelope of the prairie would not go up 
and make its home with the ibex of the mountain. 
An inhabitant of Venezuela would not make a good 
missionary to the Laplanders. 

While sudden and radical changes of social atmos- 
phere may prevent the destruction of the homogene- 
ous element in society, they often produce the most 
extreme antagonisms. To borrow a figure, the min- 
istry is an instrument of light to the world, just as 
a window gives light into a room. Here is a pane, 
without a flaw, admitting rays of light without any 
change in direction, without destroying their inten- 
sity. That is the polished preacher, a shining shaft 
in the quiver of the Lord. Here is another pane; 
the light of the sun through it is blurred with a 
thousand aberrations. The rays cross each other in 



The Divine Adjustment. 189 

confusion. It transmits nothing but light. This is 
one of our rough, unhewn ministers, a man who has 
had a preparation of grace for a mighty work, a 
great, uncultured blunderer; but converted — on fire 
with divine love. The light of the Holy Ghost 
shines through him somehow or other; men see the 
light, and are constrained to walk in it. 

Where our teachers and professors and lawyers 
and statesmen go to church, send our cultured men 
of God, men who can adorn the depths of piety w T ith 
the jewels of a polished rhetoric and with the sub- 
limest eloquence. In more sparsely settled regions, 
where society is yet in its formative state, send our 
zealous sons of thunder, men whose enthusiasm and 
pathos make their listeners weep. 

As there is a sphere for every man in the world, 
there is a notch for every preacher. As there has 
been but little clashing of interests in the past, there 
need be no serious conflict in the future. It is not 
the name, but the work of the minister, that should 
be perpetuated. "If the foot shall say, Because I 
am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it there- 
fore not of the body? . . . And the eye can 
not say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor 
again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 
Nay more, those members of the body which seem 
to be more feeble are necessary." 

The jaunty little evangelist who may be able to 
sally forth and get up revivals, and start pioneer 
societies, is not to be despised, for his work is of 
God ; and he should not therefore assume that those 
who have never engaged immediately in this work 



190 American Ministry. 

have been failures. The Church in this country is 
in no more need of new additions than a higher type 
of piety. Men who are able to present the finer 
distinctions of moral truth, who are prudent admin- 
istrators of discipline, are doing a far more important 
work than those who simply gather into the fold. 

While God in his wonderful economy has utilized 
men with but few opportunities of personal culture 
in the past, it is not so much so now. Neither will 
it be so in the future, because not necessaiy. Knowl- 
edge is becoming wide-spread, creating a kind of in- 
tolerance for superficial notions from the pulpit, and 
a dislike for the hasty gilding of that which has 
depth and power in it. Whatever God may have 
wrought through illiterate men in the past, he is now 
placing a reward on thorough scholarship. Whoever 
would stand firm now must put himself to some 
trouble in preparation, and prove his fitness. There 
is now a great demand for men who are able to make 
Christianity consistent with the new lights constantly 
appearing in the canopy of knowledge, men able to 
discern false analogies, and present arguments equal 
in power to those of other professions. 

The world is getting full of readers, in every 
branch of learning, who are no longer to be enter- 
tained and instructed with commonplaces from the 
pulpit. Whoever feels called to the ministry of God 
should keep in mind that there has a generation 
grown up since our whole territory was dotted with 
school-houses, like stars in the firmament. While 
engaged in historical and Biblical research, he should 
remember that there are millions of children in our 



Great Culture is Needed. 191 

Sabbath-schools, who know as much theology at ten 
years as our fathers and mothers at twenty ; also, that 
the next generation will not likely tolerate ignorance 
in the pulpit. A minister should not only be thor- 
ough in his department, but should be versatile in all 
that interests men in favor of the truth. Biblical 
exegesis alone will not answer every demand now. 
He must extend his researches, enlarge his opinions, 
broaden his views, and aim at the highest things. 
He shall not secularize the pulpit, nor draw it away 
from its exclusive and specific mission, but intensify 
its power. He shall not liberalize the Gospel, nor 
extend its prerogatives beyond the divine charter, but 
he shall utilize public opinion and human philoso- 
phy, to speed the progress of a single idea, "Jesus 
and the resurrection." 

Unless this is done, piety and learning, heart and 
head, will be divorced. Religion will be left to the 
ignorant and superstitious, and learning will be turned 
over to infidelity. 

A minister, to be useful at this time, must iden- 
tify himself with the interests of his fellow-men. It 
will never do to get frightened at the world, or to 
look solemn and supernaturally wise at all the nat- 
ural joys of life. The swift -flowing Anglo-Saxon 
blood in our veins is leading us into new relations 
and surroundings, calling out new sympathies and 
new phases of life, and causing the stiff Puritanism 
of the time to stand aghast. Simply because there 
are undue tendencies to this spirit, it is neither expe- 
dient nor necessary to check its natural and harmless 
outworkings. Religion is not hostile to any of the 



192 American Ministry. 

legitimate manifestations of human life. God hates 
nothing but sin. 

Christian life is not bound by a set of juridical 
statutes, to whose iron limits every act of life must 
be chained. Many acts of life which are recognized 
by the Divine Word, and which arise from the nat- 
ural constitution, have no immediate moral or relig- 
ious bearing. That rigid notion of life which sup- 
poses that every thing which does not work an im- 
mediate moral good must be wrong, and therefore 
denounced, robs the human heart of all spontaneous 
activity. Through these mistaken views there is 
often an ugly and doleful shadow thrown over the 
most sterling virtues, and the voice of religion is 
made to sound like a voice from the sepulcher. The 
free, bounding movement of mirth and tenderness is 
not obliged to give a moral account of itself; it 
needs no justification. The highest type of piety 
brings with it the highest type of freedom. 

Do not misunderstand. A preacher is not to 
make the beauty of the humanities chief over the 
beauty of holiness. Prevailing influences are not 
always to mold his conduct. It will often become 
necessary for him to set his face like flint against 
them, consenting to perish in reputation that they 
may be overthrown. There is no requirement that 
he shall assimilate with every new thing that pre- 
sents itself, and lose his individuality by absorption. 
His own thought and judgment are not to be sur- 
rendered until self is forgotten, but he should bring 
all things into the estimate of his methods. He 
should live and act in conscious harmony with all 



Purity is Demanded. 193 

that is virtuous, or noble, or pure. As all the nor- 
mal qualities of the natural man are brought out, as 
the social instincts are developed and appropriately 
gratified, man in society will become more perfectly 
fitted to speed the benign mission of the Christian 
religion. 

The age is also demanding purity, as well as high 
culture. It is no unfavorable sign that the people 
are asking that the Gospel they receive shall be 
backed by a pure and spotless life, a life compara- 
tively faultless, and free from the ordinary defects of 
our humanity. A little learning, a strong lung, and 
a measure of piety will not satisfy the demand that 
vital Christianity shall be exemplified in the charac- 
ter of its advocate. An intellectual fitness, a gen- 
eral culture, must be armed with the weapons of a 
spiritual warfare, to become mighty through God to 
the pulling down of strongholds. The successful ap- 
peal is not made to the conscience with the intellect 
and the judgment. To change opinion is not always 
to change the heart and life. To teach a moral pre- 
cept, and then violate it, is to rob it of its potency. 
A consistent life constrains the world to love the 
truth it knows. It inspires human endeavor to go 
beyond the intelligence, and obey the holiest affec- 
tions. The world's Exemplar repromulgated and 
authoritatively announced the old Athenian doctrine 
that the only true method of teaching was by pre- 
cept and example. To separate them is always to 
fail half-way. Preaching the Gospel is a holy work, 
and should claim from a holy people its best mate- 
rial. 

17 



194 American Ministry. 

I know of no more unfortunate thing for the 
success of a Church than to be represented by any 
one who will not measure with any force of character 
among his fellow-men. A pure and steadfast life 
can only purchase a character which will lend its 
force to every word and sermon. The soundness 
of a man's life, and his Christian excellence, can not 
fail to impress the world. 



Chapter X 



MATERIAL AIDS. 



THE material interests of the Church in this 
country seem to have reached a crisis. The 
separation of Church and state compels the adoption 
of what is known as the voluntary system. While 
faith in God is strong, while the people are alive to 
the vital interests of the Gospel, the voluntary sys- 
tem is equal to every emergency; but the world has 
never seen it brought to a test in times of general 
indifference. Its effectiveness depends very greatly 
on the living piety of the Church. Whether the 
Churches of Europe would have survived, under its 
operation in the last century, is an open question. 
While the theory is a just one, and has its basis in 
its own value and expediency, it yet partakes of the 
nature of an experiment. 

There are difficulties ahead. Modern tendencies 
are toward religious indifference. If we are drifting 
out of a period of stern and gloomy faith into a 
broad and free religious atmosphere ; if we are get- 
ting away from that peculiar type of obligation which 
appeared stronger to wield men than the force of 
civil authority, into the regions of a lax and accom- 
modating morality, — it requires no prophet's vision 

*95 



196 Material Aids. 

to see what may come upon us. We already see 
disastrous effects in individual cases. There is now 
an urgent call for ecclesiastical action relating to the 
monetary interests of the Churches. Discipline 
should not be so lax as to screen miserly wealth in 
the Church from its just tribute to God. 

There is another difficulty. It appears that the 
world does not yet understand the philosophy of 
paper money. A history of its issues will sustain 
the proposition. The history of circulating banks, 
from the twelfth century down, shows that a species 
of financial blindness has followed in their wake, and 
time and again brought disaster on themselves and 
all concerned. It is to be kept in mind that paper 
money has generally been the child of necessity. 
Such was the issue of the Bank of Venice in the 
twelfth century, the Bank of England in 1694, and 
the Bank of Austria in 18 16. The fact is also shown 
in the organic relation of so many governments in 
Europe to their banking systems. More paper 
money has been issued to meet the urgent necessi- 
ties of war than for all the combined commercial 
objects of the world. In times of national peril, 
immediate safety is consulted above every other 
consideration. The issue of paper money, under the 
auspices and on the credit of the government, is 
likely to enliven business, and give a tone of cheer- 
fulness and popular quietude unknown to any other 
agency. But if this money is issued to carry on 
war, which, in itself, is always a financial failure, 
there is likely to follow a depression. 

The exigencies of English military operations 



Our Financial Pressure. 197 

called forth an extra issue of circulating notes through 
the bank of England, and when this bank resumed 
specie payment, in 1823, there followed a wide-spread 
and painful disaster. The necessities of the Amer- 
ican Revolution called out an issue which became 
worthless in spite of the good credit of the govern- 
ment. After the war of 18 12, the finances of the 
country were in a terrible condition. The necessities 
of the late war created our National Banks, which, 
so far, have been successful. From now on may 
appear the difficulty, as shown by all experience. It 
may be that European history, in money matters, 
will repeat itself on these shores. The monetary 
condition of Europe, as compared with America, is 
a general and permanent depression. As compared 
with herself, the scarcity of money has simply brought 
about a different order of things. There is no waste 
of products. Every-where may be discovered the 
strictest economy. The ordinary Englishman or Ger- 
man knows the difference in the value of his small 
change. Nearly all nations in Europe have passed 
through phases of financial history which we have 
not reached, but which we are about to enter — a 
period of financial closeness. After we get into it or 
through it we will count our cent pieces. The time 
may come when it will be necessary to retrench in 
all the departments of life. 

Now, if these probabilities are justly founded, 
what are the religious portents of the time? The 
disposition will be to retrench, first of all, around the 
altar of God. In view of the growth of Zion, and 
the plain mission of the American Church, this would 



198 Material Aids. 

be fatal. What shall we do then? Give up? No! 
no! The demand is imperative for a greater sacri- 
fice. We must teach our people that they hold their 
earthly substance as they hold their lives, through 
the will and in trust before God. It was intended in 
the divine economy that there should be a close rela- 
tion between wealth and religion. Religion is not 
materialistic, but the most wonderful material results 
have always followed in its wake. Religion opens 
out the avenues of wealth, and wealth, in its turn, 
gives facilities for the progress of religion. They are 
mutual helpers. Wherever the Gospel is preached 
the arts of civilization are soon found at work. It 
has shown itself, indirectly, the greatest master of 
material forces. It inspires the soul with desires for 
a higher attainment and a better state, and awakens 
the highest energies for every human enterprise. It 
makes man in some measure dissatisfied with his 
present state, and leads him on to new lights and new 
achievements. These new advantages, in their turn, 
are to be used as voluntary agencies in the spread of 
the Gospel. 

Wealth is a factor in the evangelism of the world. 
The success of Christ's cause greatly depends upon 
it. God loves money for the uses it may serve. His 
creatures are to engage in the production of material 
value as a duty, not for itself alone, but for moral 
and philanthropic ends. That heavenly-mindedness 
which affects to ignore earthly instrumentalities in 
the propagation of divine truth of all superstitions 
is the most pitiable. The man who adds no material 
value to society is in some sense a pauper. The man 



Money-making — An Obligation. 199 

who folds his arms to live oh inherited wealth falls in 
the same category. It becomes every man's duty to 
produce something, and use that production to an 
honest purpose in the fear of God. The pursuit of 
wealth is right; only the soul that seeks it needs to 
be enlightened and sanctified.- Money can be made 
the means of bettering and saving men. The more 
the better. In the right use of it can it only bring 
joy to the possessor. 

Every man is under obligation to use his money 
for benevolent purposes according to his ability, and 
with the understanding that no man liveth to him- 
self. He is responsible for how he uses it. There 
is a sin of indiscriminate alms-giving. He is to give 
where it will likely be productive. It would be safe 
to give on economic principles ; in the light of a bar- 
gain, bringing benefit to both parties; especially in 
the work of education and the building up of spiritual 
forces. The ordinary business man is apt to under- 
rate the value of Christian influences. There are a 
few men who are even blind to the benefits of civil- 
ized society. They can not see how that property 
or life would not be secure, nor how facilities for 
money-making could not be great among a vicious, 
immoral set of men. They are never willing to rec- 
ognize the fact that the impalpable Christian influ- 
ences of society contribute nearly every thing to 
make men sober and industrious. While these influ- 
ences make men thousands of dollars, they are not 
induced to offer any support in return. They are 
religious paupers. They receive that for which they 
give nothing. They transmit the blessings of good 



200 Material Aids. 

society into gold, and then refuse to support the 
Gospel which gives good society. 

There are two kinds of workers for Christ. Chris- 
tian educators and preachers, and those who accumu- 
late wealth. One are producers of moral values, the 
other of material. Our teachers do not make money ; 
they are simply consumers. But they give intellec- 
tual training to our children, for which we are willing 
to pay in money and think well of the bargain. So 
with the true preacher. He is the producer of moral 
and spiritual values which the business man makes 
immediate use of, and upon which he depends in his 
pursuit of wealth, and he ought to be as willing to 
pay for this as any other. The man who gains knowl- 
edge for selfish purposes is a miser. The voice of 
God calls him to put his talent and learning to their 
best uses. It is the same with him who accumulates 
wealth. He is called to prove his fidelity to God. 
In these times, if any thing, the money-maker is 
engaged in the most urgent of all works. The most 
pressing temporal need of the Church, at present, is 
more means to carry out its enterprises. 

Let the Church heed the shout of the sainted 
Eddy, when he answered back from the coastings of 
the shoreless ocean: "Forward is the word, no falling 
back; we must take the world for Christ; say so to our 
people ; God calls us louder than thunder in the heavens; 
he strikes the hour; we must throw down our gold in the 
presence of Godl" 



Chapter XI 



INNER CHURCH LIFE. 



THE great problem of Christian life at the present 
time is, not how we shall explore the depths of 
certain great doctrines, or how we shall magnify the 
graces of some definite sphere of morals, but how we 
shall equalize and adjust our doctrinal attainments 
and our Christian duties. If the boatman simply 
pulls one oar, he will not be apt to make any pro- 
gress. If he pulls both oars, giving ten pounds more 
weight to one than the other, his variation from the 
straight course may not be so apparent, but he is yet 
describing a circle only of larger dimensions. 

It is the same in the agencies of Christian pro- 
gress. One class of thinkers are impressed that God 
is most wonderfully sovereign in all his works; that 
man has very little to do in his salvation anyhow, 
and it appears useless to make very much exertion. 
Another class supposes that God has left the matter 
pretty much in human hands; that he has given us a 
kind of inherency of reformation, and that this refor- 
mation contains, somehow or other, an inherency of 
pardon, and from thence we ascend to the plane of a 
Christian life. The truth is midway from either ex- 
treme. It is evident that God uses both human and 

201 



202 Inner Church Life. 

divine agencies in redemption. If this fact is kept 
clear, many difficulties may be avoided, many phe- 
nomena may be explained which would otherwise 
appear mysterious. There should be no clashing, no 
discord between God's work and man's work in the 
redemptive scheme. There should be no encroach- 
ments one upon the other. Each has its sphere and 
its relative importance. Human instrumentality is a 
necessity of redemption, not of itself, but because 
God has made it so. 

Man, by nature, has been invested with certain 
powers and affections, such as the natural faculties 
of the mind, a conscience, and a moral nature. He 
is endowed with the five senses, and a will of such 
wonderful power and freedom as to be able to bring 
these powers and affections into rebellion for all of 
life ; yea, for all of eternity. These qualities belong 
to him naturally. They are not directly gifts of the 
atonement. God has made the success of the Church 
to rest measurably on the exercise of these natural 
faculties of man's being. Among other things, they 
are made to amount to something. They are also 
capable of great exertion and wonderful develop- 
ment. There is no end to human progress. Man's 
hand can always be kept busy in the perfection of 
its mechanisms; his brain can always be employed 
in new and great achievements. In some of its 
reaches, it has already seemed to throw off the hin- 
derances of time and sense, and look in on the 
infinite. And yet, with all these strides of intellect 
and human activity, it has been difficult to secure an 
adjustment of redemptive agencies. Great streams 



Medleval Shadows. 203 

of thought and opinion and energy are flowing on 
toward the ocean of man's destiny, but they are for- 
ever cutting for themselves independent and diverg- 
ing channels. Humanity in the abstract has never 
been able to gain very broad views of the divine 
economy and purposes. More than in any thing 
else is the finitude of human power illustrated in the 
vain struggle for permanent and practical adjustments 
of the human and the divine. Only for short periods 
of time in the world's history has there been any 
practical demonstration of their true relation. The 
tendency is toward the extremes on either side. 

Man has always been, more or less, a creature of 
circumstances. In those dark times of the past, when 
nearly all races of men were the subjects of rude igno- 
rance and great physical disparagement, when semi- 
barbarous surroundings made them more the creatures 
of impulse than of reason, their ideas of God and of life 
were greatly influenced by their surroundings. Pro- 
portionate to the degree in which the stern hand of 
necessity was laid upon them, in their inability to 
subdue nature's forces, and in proportion to the 
severity of the kingdoms and monarchies under 
which they lived, were their notions of the divine 
character likely to be tinged with elements of the 
severe and the dreadful. Savage life is not noted 
for its compassionate views of the Divine Being. 
The w r orshipers of Jupiter felt glad if they could 
simply escape his thunder-bolts. The Druids danced 
round their lurid fires for little more than to appease 
the gods. When the cruel hands of misfortune and 
necessity are laid on human life in the mass, the 



204 Inner Church Life. 

tendency is to give a false coloring and an absolute- 
ness to the divine sovereignty which is not warranted 
by Scripture. If the cold, cheerless views which 
hyper-Calvinism entertains of the divine nature need 
any palliation, it may be had in the remembrance 
that Calvinism was born amid many throes, in the 
stormy and fearful times of the Reformation. 

Religious thought and sympathy are not flowing 
in this direction at the present time. From the 
frigid and shivering regions of the North Pole we 
have moved southward, have been warmed by the 
sun; and we are about to cross the Equator, and 
start on our journey toward the cold, shivering re- 
gions of the South Pole. 

As has been intimated in this volume, in the last 
few centuries there has been a wonderful enlargement 
of the knowledges. Science and art and litera- 
ture have brought with them ten thousand amelio- 
rating forces. Through the discovery of the com- 
pass, commercial enterprise has broken all boundaries, 
and has claimed the whole world for its field. As a 
result, at our meals we enjoy the products of every 
continent. The art of printing has brought us books 
and periodicals without number. The railroad and 
the telegraph has given celerity to all our endeavors. 
These impulses of the later age have greatly ad- 
vanced the temporal condition of men. From the 
original Englishman, who drove the great bear from 
his den in the rocks, and made it a home for himself 
and family, to the cultured Anglo-American, living 
like a king in a skillful palace of wood or stone, 
there is a wonderful material progress. Then, again, 



The Glamour of Prosperity. 205 

this age has discovered so many errors in past opin- 
ions. Exploding superstitions, vanishing myths, and 
traditions, like will-o'-the-wisps before the day-dawn, 
are seen on every hand. The stubborn bolts which 
have held in secret so many treasures of the natural 
world have been broken, and it looks now like human 
energy, with its inborn forces, constitutes about all 
there is of human life. 

The history of the last three hundred years ap- 
pears like a demonstration of the fact that the world 
is now about able to shift for itself, without being 
bothered with any life of faith, without believing in 
any God, any heaven, or any hell. The Lord has 
removed the American people so far from pinching 
poverty and want, he has made them so easy and so 
comfortable, he has given them such wonderful 
blessings of life and freedom, that they are about 
to give over the idea that he will ever again frown 
on sin. The wholesome threatenings of the law are 
disagreeable pulpit themes in many high places of 
Zion. Our pious intentions are about to sugar the 
devil, and make him harmless as a lamb. The gla- 
mour of our prosperity is threatening to overwhelm 
us. We are in danger of drifting away from the 
stern faith of fifty years ago. The religious atmos- 
phere of the future looks beclouded with the smoke 
of a slumbering dilettanteism. We are facing the 
issues of an age already drunken with the wine of 
worldliness. God help the Church to stem the tides 
just now, to gain a victory over the greed of w r ealth 
and the lust of gold ! Then the world is safe. 

We shall not be able to manage the Lord's 



2o6 Inner Church Life. 

business on our own account. The success of the 
Church does not rest upon exactly the same basis 
with the success of an iron-furnace, or a manufac- 
tory, or a railroad. The simple agencies which 
make Odd - fellowship and Freemasonry successful 
will not insure the perpetuity of the Church. While 
the same measure of zeal and the same careful ad- 
justings of ordinary appliances in worldly schemes 
become necessary to a healthful Church life, they are 
not alone necessary. There is an inner sanctuary in 
the Church which makes it the world's celestial vis- 
itor. Far above all mystic shrines and symbolisms 
there is a fountain of cleansing, whose waters are 
invested with regenerative properties. From this 
fountain flows the healing stream of the Christian 
religion. If any refuse to drink here, they have not 
the life of the Church. The Finisher of our Faith 
laid great stress on the definiteness of the agencies 
by which his kingdom should be built upon earth. 
Wherever these agencies have been utilized, the 
Church has flourished. No accidental enthusiasm, 
or work of chance, can ever successfully replace the 
influence of the Comforter. The Spirit must do his 
work. He must be recognized as the inspiration and 
life of the Church through all ages, as the only surety 
against all hinderances, the only hope of a steady and 
unconquerable progress. 

. The Church, to-day, is in the enjoyment of great 
achievements. There was a time when persecution 
and the rack were the fearful arguments of wicked- 
ness; when the secular arm was interposed to check 
the progress of Christianity; when the faithful had 



An Evident Danger. 207 

to fly to the caves of the mountains, like foxes to 
their dens, for safety ; when the sanguinary terrors of 
the Inquisition threatened to overawe the defenders 
of the faith ; when intolerance swept through the 
Church, like the besom of destruction. These times 
have gone by, it is to be hoped, forever. Civil gov- 
ernments now, instead of spurning, draw their very 
life-blood from Christianity. In the downfall of the 
Church civil liberty, as it is at present constituted, 
would perish forever. On its moral teachings the 
state relies for good society. The steady light of 
Christian fires now shines across the Continent, and 
from the Lakes to the Gulf. It gleams into the 
darkness of heathenism. It is about to enwrap all 
tongues and peoples. The Church is flushed with the 
hope of the speedy conquest of the world. In the midst 
of these successes is a snare. The danger of a ship at 
sea is not only when the storm is fiercest, but also when 
the ocean is lulling to sleep. There is likewise dan- 
ger when the sea has been calm for so long that the 
sailors have lost from their memories the realities of 
the tempest. If the storm should come upon them, 
it might find them unprepared in the very greatness 
of their preparations for a peaceful voyage. 

The Church in our own country has passed 
through the ordeal of incipiency. It has gathered 
strength in its progress, until now a great moral 
inertia is propelling its mighty machinery. The im- 
petus which it has gathered in the sterling struggles 
of the last century is sending it almost resistlessly 
into the future. This accumulated strength is a con- 
stant element of power. 



208 Inner Church Life. 

The train whistles for the station. The engineer 
cuts off the steam. There goes the train down the 
track! See the almost resistless movement of that 
engine, with the propelling power all taken away! 
The force which it gathered coming down the track 
still moves it. Yet by the time it reaches the depot 
it has stopped, as resistless in its stillness as in its 
motion before ! If religious forces were ever in- 
tended to stop, there would be no danger in taking 
away the moving force for a time; but they are 
not — and they operate on nearly the same principle. 
The perilous philosophy of ecclesiastical history has 
been to depend upon the spiritual momentum of the 
Church, as a kind of perpetual motion raised up to 
release men from the faith and obligations of a 
religious life. 

This danger to the American people is not off 
yonder. It is upon us. We are in danger of being 
overwhelmed in the magnitude of the impulses we 
have started. The earnest, devout lives of which we 
boast are in danger of being touched with indiffer- 
entism. Religious profession is likely to become a 
convenience. A taste for the glowing and the dra- 
matic is now being cultivated, over the vital and the 
pure. Church attendance is decreasing wherever 
talent does not draw. Wicked men see this, and 
rejoice, looking forward to the time when a low type 
of piety shall be the occasion to loose religion from 
its persuasiveness and its power over the people. 
Let the success of the Gospel in the salvation of 
souls be laid like a burden on the Church, and that 
time shall never come. 



Value of the Christian System. 209 

Christian Philanthropy. — Vital piety becomes a 
part of our national life, in that Christian philan- 
thropy, in a distinctive sense, is the soul of our 
greatest energies. The value of a system is known 
by its fruits. Christianity now claims its right to the 
credence and respect of man, because it has bettered 
his condition. It has lifted him, under the pressure 
of a great many philanthropic forces. Nearly all 
classes of men are willing to recognize the material 
advantages of our religious system, while they are 
blind to its spiritual beauties. They avail themselves 
of its blessings, and dispute its divine origin. They 
gather from it the ability with which to assail it. 
From the bow of the ambushed Indian the eagle 
receives in its breast the arrow whose course was 
directed by one of his own pinions. Men see hypo- 
crites, or some sorry specimen of redeeming grace, 
and they point to him and say, "Your system is 
like that." 

In these times, we are coming face to face with 
the fact that men are occupying the strange position 
of being in sympathy with all the philanthropic 
results of Christianity, without being in sympathy 
with its higher spiritual results. They are willing to 
trace practical benevolence to its source in the Chris- 
tian sentiments of the age. They are not willing to 
trace these sentiments to their source. The Christian 
system is a grand fact, a good thing; but not a re- 
vealed truth, or a saving power. It brings men 
nearer together, but does not bring them back to 
God. In close relation with this idea, lies the dis- 
tinction between moral and Christian philanthropy. 

18 



210 Inner Church Life. 

In the latter, the God sense has been superadded to 
the natural or pathematic emotions, lifting them into 
a more brilliant sphere of religious enterprise. The 
distinction can be illustrated in a comparison of hu- 
manitarian efforts before the Christian era with those 
of the present. 

Love to man is an original instinct. In its in- 
tensity and clearer outlines it was blunted by the 
Fall. The introduction of human selfishness simply 
prescribed its boundaries. It yet exists as the wreck 
of what it once was. It gives out an obscured light. 
It is like a cheerful star-gleam shining into the night 
between two brilliant days. Christian philanthropy 
is the clear, the forcible, the absolute light of the 
noonday. God himself measured out its extent to 
us when he gave his " unspeakable gift." It looks 
on man from the vantage-ground of the cross. Christ 
says, "Love one another as I have loved you;" and, 
again, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." 

The moral goodness of the human heart has never 
led any race of people much beyond the law of re- 
ciprocity; that is, the law of equal rights and priv- 
ileges and mutual charities. It has always seemed 
to expend itself in godd wishes and a few feeble 
efforts for the welfare of mankind. It will help a 
relative or a friend without hope of remuneration. 
At the same time, it can remain contented and un- 
disturbed in the midst of a great deal of suffering and 
misery. China and India have not advanced the con- 
dition of their masses for a thousand years. In these 
countries purely moral forces have had a chance to 
show what they can do. They have had every oppor- 



Condition of the Orient. 211 

tunity to reveal the extent to which the natural im- 
pulses of the heart may lead a people in the absence 
of a perfect example and the leadings of an authori- 
tative Spirit. The vastness of purely intellectual and 
moral potencies find here their best showing. In 
these countries, as in all others where the banner of 
the cross has not been lifted, no great estimate has 
ever been placed on the individual, and no great in- 
terest has ever been taken in his condition. Conse- 
quently the millions lie in wretchedness and want," 
victims of human passion and oppression* with no 
hand to help them. If the moral philanthropy of 
the human heart is the home of such wonderful char- 
ity; if it alone is the inspiration of European and 
American benevolence, why has it not lifted Asia 
from her thralldom? Her climes are as fair, her 
valleys are as fertile, as ours. The God of nature has 
blessed her with as lavish a hand, and yet there she 
lies, holding half the population of the globe like a 
dead weight. It may be said, her monarchies have 
been so severe that the people have never been able 
to disenthrall themselves. 

But Europe was in the chains of as severe a thrall- 
dom a thousand years ago. Something or other has 
broken these chains. European monarchies have 
been toned down, their severities have been taken 
away, and a republic has been given to America. 
What is this something? Here is the vital issue. 
The moral teachings of Grecian and Roman philos- 
ophy were often as sublime and truthful as any thing 
in the revealed doctrines. Socrates and Plato and 
Seneca reasoned eloquently from first principles, and 



212 Inner Church Life. 

the people grew worse under their teachings. Such 
has been the case with all ethnic systems. There is 
no moral force at man's command by which he can 
successfully and constantly counteract his innate tend- 
encies toward the corruption of his own life and 
that of society. As it has been in pagan systems, so 
will the world grow worse under a Gospel splendid 
in its theory and magnificence unless the principle 
of the Spirit's work be kept alive as a strong under- 
current of conviction pervading all thought and feeling 
and action. 

There are a great many forces at work in these 
times which have not been estimated at their true 
value until lately. It appears that the world is just 
now beginning to reap the secondary and remote 
benefits of Christianity. The mission and ministry 
of Christ started a great under-current of influences 
which are just now beginning to crop out and be 
made available. The Savior's commission was, "Go 
ye into all the zvorld and preach the Gospel.' ' A 
strange commission in that age. Nothing like it was 
ever heard of before. As the disciples had opportu- 
nity they were to do good unto all men through the 
love of Christ, which constraineth them. 

From the beginning Christianity had in view the 
conversion of the whole world. Such an idea, so far 
as I know, does not belong to any pagan system. 
Jupiter and Apollo and Mercury never had any mis- 
sionaries in any distinctive sense. On the other 
hand, the religion of the Bible gathered in its scope 
the wide world, and it has not yet given over the 
undertaking in all its magnitude. That same old love 



Philanthropic Influences. 213 

is still in the bosom of the Church, whose source is 
the fountain of that life, which came on the Day of 
Pentecost to inbreathe its everlasting convictions into 
the souls of men, and lift them from the twilight of 
human love into its noonday splendors. 

And now, what is it doing more than has ordina- 
rily been done, in all ages ? It is calling into life a 
combination of world-wide influences. 

First. It magnifies the individual man, in giving 
him an estimate and experience of his value before 
God. This has led him to seek a recognition of his 
personal rights in both Church and state. He be- 
comes worthy to have the field of knowledge opened 
to him, and he is now being educated. The com- 
mon-school system of our country, which is so won- 
derfully training the mind and lifting the masses of 
the people into the highest planes of intelligence, 
has been drawn from the great deep of Christian 
philanthropy. 

Second. In that ancient time, before the Christian 
religion began to have its effects on civilization, more 
than in giving to the state a few good citizens, such 
things as asylums and orphan-homes and hospitals 
were isolated facts. Now they are every -where, 
supported in the most perfect system. They are 
established in almost every county, and supported 
from the public treasury, affording relief to the poor 
and the unfortunate. 

Third. The universal love of Christ's Gospel 
silently brought about the liberation of Roman slaves 
before it was fully under headway in the Latin world. 
This same love created a sentiment against slavery in 



ii4 • Inner Church Life. 

the United States, which finally resulted in its over- 
throw. It has further put its powerful hand on the 
slave-traffic of the world, and bids fair to stop it en- 
tirely. The divine philanthropy of the Gospel has 
gone to those countries where human slavery exists; 
and, as sure as it can get a hold on society, the 
shackles will fall of necessity. 

Fourth. This love, in our own country, keeps 
alive a system of benevolences such as no rule of 
force could ever command. 

Fifth. It is gradually fusing and blending the 
forces of Protestantism, so that its collective agencies 
can be used as never before. 

Sixth. It is creating a sentiment against intem- 
perance, which is destined to work its overthrow. 
It inheres in Christian philanthropy alone to interdict 
the liquor traffic, from the distillery down. 

Seventh. Among the most important ameliorative 
forces which the Gospel of Christ has invoked is the 
science of international law. In ancient times na- 
tions were either disrelated, or else they were likely 
to be belligerent. No law governed their relations 
but that of force. Strength meant dominion ; weak- 
ness meant dependency. Instead of the survival of 
the fittest, it was a survival of the strongest. The 
right of conquest for dominion was recognized, — a 
state of opinion and feeling which brought almost 
constant warfare. We hazard the assertion, that 
from the introduction of Christianity the popular 
disrelish for war began to grow stronger. After a 
while there were feeble attempts made at adjustment 
and reconciliation. It was finally believed that a 



International Law. 215 

nation might have honor, as well as a man. In 
course of time treaties were made, and faithfully kept. 
Then principles of law were laid down, regulating 
national conduct. The probabilities of war between 
the nations of Christendom were lessened. They 
now look in the face of this international code, and 
understand each other better. And the time appears 
near when all difficulties may be amicably settled at 
a national tribunal, prepared beforehand for the pur- 
pose; when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the 
calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and 
a little child shall lead them;" when swords shall 
be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning- 
hooks, when "nation shall not lift up sword against 
nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 

These influences, with many others, are the felt 
throbs of the great, living, beating heart of religion; 
and they find their source in the "love wherewith he 
loved us. " These are the secondary final causes for 
which Christ came into the world. The grandest im- 
pulses of this age are but the active agencies of the 
Holy Ghost. They are but the sum of individual 
impulses. The soul, converted, comes into a new 
world. New lights, new feelings, new desires, new 
influences, are thrown around it, — all awakened by 
the Holy Spirit. Then, as drops form the ocean, as 
rivulets form the stream, as atoms make up the uni- 
verse, so this general life of goodness, of virtue, of 
benevolence, has been given to society? Can specu- 
lative philosophy show any such results? Will sci- 



216 Inner Church Life. 

olism please show any such fruits of its systems? 
It is now a truism that, wherever the Gospel goes, 
there is life and enterprise and progress in every 
thing. 

In this grand work the only citadel to be guarded 
is the inner life of the Church. Vital piety must be 
kept in the popular heart. The power of the living 
spirit must keep pace with these multiplied energies. 
Then, we must be in earnest. It is not the flash of 
the sword of the Spirit that cuts, but its edge. It is 
not the sheet-lightning which tears the oak, but the 
sharp and arrowy lines which come with the power 
of the thunder-bolt. There is no demand now for 
general indefinite religious impressions, but deep and 
clear convictions that God is in Christ reconciling the 
world, and that we are hid with him in God. We 
must know experimentally that the doctrines of the 
Gospel are true. A smothered and sleepy fantasy 
can not be substituted for the stronger convictions 
of faith. If the true fear of God and a sense of his 
majesty and omnipotence dwell in the popular heart, 
its morals and its laws will always be kept within 
proper limits. We need a faith which unconsciously, 
though more decidedly, influences the popular heart. 
It is the aim of Christianity to inweave in society an 
honest and settled sobriety of thought, which, with- 
out organization or plan, will rebuke the evil and 
sanction the right. 

One of the positive hinderances to personal relig- 
ious life at the present time is the great mania for 
organizing. We must club together. We can do 



Religion. 217 

hardly any thing without some associative prompt- 
ing-. Our Christian benevolences and our charities 
are nearly all according to "Constitution and By- 
laws." We put a great estimate on the amount of 
work done, to the neglect of what we are. Our 
personal relations with God are lost sight of in our 
zeal to become workers. Untold demoralizings are 
the result of a failure to observe the great law of 
fitness. Labor in the cause of Christ which is with- 
out character will soon expend its force, and will 
endanger the healthful influences of Christian labor, 
and, very likely, cultivate an idea that religion is a 
succession of good deeds, rather than a principle; a 
collective and temporary impulse to do some good 
thing, rather than a deep and real force, moving all 
the faculties of the mind and all the affections of the 
heart toward things divine. 

Religion is something living, powerful, blessed. 
It is not honesty, or morality, or virtue. These are 
its fruits. It is the illumination of the soul with 
the highest joys and impulses. It dislodges evil 
desires and propensities, and demands of the indi- 
vidual daily self-denial. It gives truth the empire 
over the mind, and "Holiness to the Lord" is writ- 
ten on the heart and life. It is not the knowledge 
which satisfies the understanding, but the experi- 
enced truth that purifies the inner man, that ele- 
vates, ennobles, and sanctifies the whole nature. 
Religion is yet practical ; it may be transmuted into 
flesh and blood and brain and affection, and be sent 
out like a brilliant light from the treasure of the 

x 9 



218 Inner Church Life. 

inward life. Religion enables a man to spiritualize 
every thing he touches. 

After all our apologies for Christianity, after all 
our arguments for its truth, after every show of 
learning and rhetoric in its defense, it needs to be 
shown in the lives of Christians. 



FINIS. 



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